Hi, > > Thanks in advance for publishing them.
Sent via PM. > I can vouch for this fact that, sadly and while implementing a "full IDE" > compatibility mode, the Compact Flash cards (their "reader" is actually > just a controller-less CF connector to PATA IDE connector adapter) are > totally unreliable when used on an IDE bus, be it from SMSQ/E or Linux: > they *might* seem to work, at first (at least some brands might look like > they do), and as long as you copy files in a raw on a blank medium, but > as soon as you start deleting files and writing others (i.e. for random > access, and with fragmentation), you get immediate medium corruption ! Yes. BUT: I have noticed more than once that, strangely enough, if you use the CF Cards with a DOS partition scheme, and FAT32 formatted partitions with QXL.WIN container files, then this works much better (normally flawlessly) - on the same machine, with the same CF card, in the same adapter and position. For example, copying the content of my main QXL.WIN file (formatted to 200MB) from the SD card to the FAT32 formatted CF card, under SMSQE, worked like a charm. drvchk and drvlink revealed no problems... With a direct QLWA disk, it is really hit and miss (I managed, once, to compile SMSQE - but that is only a 25 MB file) and mostly miss rather than hit... Atari partitions were always unreliable... I ** believe ** that this is due to the fact that direct QLWA disks (with no partitioning scheme) or QLWA files on Atari partitions are always addressed as CHS (cylinder/head/side) whilst I made it so that FAT32 partitions are always addressed via LBA. I intend to try what happens when QLWQ and Atari partitioned CF Cards are also addressed via LBA, and whether that doesn't solve the situation.... Unfortunately, I haven't had time to make conclusive tests on that yet, though. The changes to SMSQE to test this are trivial, but then this needs to be tested extensively, and that takes time. (I would also have to come up with a scheme to distinguish between CF cards and real hard disks, to keep the CHS access for them). > > Sadly, I did not find a single SD card to IDE adapter that could be > configured on a master/slave IDE port, i.e. they all grab the "stand > alone" role and forbid using a second IDE drive as a slave (or master). Yes, that's true. In part, that's also why I think that having several partitions on SD disks can be useful. > I might have found a solution, and I recently ordered a PATA IDE to > SATA adapter (with master/slave jumper) and a SD card to SATA adapter. > I should receive them by mid-June (COVID allowing), and will then > report my luck (or lack thereof) with this setting... > I'll be most interested to hear about that. Wolfgang _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List
