Re: IDE and CF on CFFA

[Rich <rich@dwave.NOSPAM.net>]

In article <4059907d$0$18765$636a15ce@news.free.fr>, 
stephane.guillard@steria.com says...
> Hi Rich,
> 
> Now my turn for a question. I've done a full ATA/ATAPI PIO/UDMA driver for
> the AmigaOne (basically a PowerPC mainboard with a VIA southbridge). It
> works fine with HDD's & CD's, but a user recently reported that when he
> hooks a compactflash card to the IDE bus with the ad hoc adapter, my driver
> wont deal with it.
> 

Stephane,

The first thought that comes to mind from the situation you describe:
Is the CF adapter properly forcing the CF card into "TRUE IDE" mode?
In other words, is pin 9 of the CF socket grounded?

Also, is the user removing and reinserting the CF card after power was 
applied? This is not allowed in "True IDE" mode.
Here is a relavant excerpt from the SanDisk CF product manual:

>Removing and reinserting the CompactFlash
>Memory Card while the host computer=3Fs power is on
>will reconfigure the CompactFlash Card to PC Card
>ATA mode from the original True IDE Mode. To
>configure the CompactFlash Card in True IDE
>Mode, the 50-pin socket must be power cycled with
>the CompactFlash Card inserted and -OE (output
>enable) grounded by the host.

If the CF card is indeed in TrueIDE mode and attached correctly,
I would assume your ATA/ATAPI code would work. I would look closely
at the adapter!  I have found the Adtron SDDA-03 adapters works well.

If I can be of additional help, feel free to email me directly at: 
rich@dreher.net

Sincerely,
Rich