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What are the recommended uses for the CF slot?

Tj

amigasociety wrote:What are the recommended uses for the CF slot?

Tj

I use it to store various Debian squeeze kernels that I use for testing. It can also be use to hold the amigaboot.of file. (Although on "First Contact" systems this is stored in a small FFS boot partition).

Trevor

Hi,
Keep in mind that the CF slot is only usable by CFE for the moment being, not AmigaOS.
You can format your card with FAT32 or FFS.

I take it this CF slot will be programmed later to work with Amiga OS?

Would booting Amiga OS from CF card be possible and if yes, would that be quicker?

tj

amigasociety wrote:I take it this CF slot will be programmed later to work with Amiga OS?

Would booting Amiga OS from CF card be possible and if yes, would that be quicker?

tj

The FFS boot partition on your A-X1000 contains the amigboot.of files which is used to boot the machine. Since the CF card is recognised in the CFE environment you could boot amigaboot.of from the card. However, I'm not sure it would be any quicker.

Trevor

I boot from the CF card (it's a very old one 16MB in size that came out of one of the first readily available digital cameras) and perhaps it is slower but then before that I used to boot from the CDRom so never booted from an actual SATA HD attached to the MB.

amigasociety wrote:What are the recommended uses for the CF slot?

Tj

I think the best use for a CF slot at the moment is to store an CF card in it so you know where to find one when OS4 finally gets a driver for it

(rant mode) I also think the placement of the CF slot is a PITA, I have to remove the hard drive bays in my case to get access to it, or drop the back of the case down which means unplugging the power from the mobo and gfx card. probably not a good thing to do too often. (/rant mode)

I think I'll see if I can find a CF extender cable that goes to a 3.5" drivebay card reader type thing, would make life easier if I ever use CF cards much.

Severin wrote:I also think the placement of the CF slot is a PITA, I have to remove the hard drive bays in my case to get access to it

You obviously don't have the AmigaONE X1000 case then?

Trevor

trevordick wrote:

Severin wrote:I also think the placement of the CF slot is a PITA, I have to remove the hard drive bays in my case to get access to it

You obviously don't have the AmigaONE X1000 case then?

Trevor

Yes, obviously, since it is a snap to install and remove the CF cards when the Nemo2 motherboard is installed in the "Boing Ball" case that A-Eon and AmigaKit are selling.

I like the case so much, I am going to buy a second case and modify it to accept my A4000D motherboard and PowerTower busboard, so I can have all of my NewTek Video Toaster/Flyer hard drives inside the computer case and I won't need to use a Octopus Cable to an external hard drive tower, or multiple hard drive towers.

It is a beautiful case and very high quality, made of sturdy materials. The case was one of the things that attracted me to the X1000, then as I looked at it more and more, and got to use it a little bit during the last two AmiWest Shows, all the reasons came together and made my purchase a very easy decision.

I think I have two 16mb CF cards around here that are too small to use for much of anything. I think I am going to install one and use it for booting the amigaboot.of file. I will then move everything from my 40gb System: partition to my 1.4gb Boot: partition. Then I will rename my Boot: partition to System: and rename my System: partition to Work:. Finally I will use the 107gb partition that is currently named Work: for my Debian Squeeze Linux PPC installation by deleting the partition to make it free space, so the Debian Squeeze Linux installation process will create the partitions it needs, using that free space. Hopefully the Debian Squeeze Linux can install to a partition that is formatted with a file system that OS4.1.5 can read and write to, so I can share some data between the two operating systems by copying data to and from the Linux partition(s).

Using the small CF card that I already own for booting the amigaboot.of file will solve my minor problem that I created when I Restored OS4.1.5 to the 160gb hard drive and moved my 1tb drive to my dual 2.7GHz G5 PowerMac.

I like it when my mistakes find a way to work themselves out better than I had previously imagined.

trevordick wrote:

Severin wrote:I also think the placement of the CF slot is a PITA, I have to remove the hard drive bays in my case to get access to it

You obviously don't have the AmigaONE X1000 case then?

Trevor

yup can confirm it's as easy as pie to access my CF card with my A-Eon case (& she looks so great too )

@ AmigaDave

I use my CF card to store the amigboot.of file and Debian Squeeze kernel at the moment and I'm sure in the future we'll find out some more cool ways to incorporate it into AmigaOS