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[beltrixx]

Hi

I have an A1200 with a 8Gb 3.5" external IDE drive + a CDROM. I would like to change my external drive by an internal 2.5" laptop drive. I purchased my Amiga on e-Bay about three months ago, and as far as I know, it has some kind of IDE converter to use normal (3.5") IDE devices thru an external connector installed on the left side of the case. I have opened my Miggy several times and have seen a connector for 2.5" IDE drives available inside.

Would like to know if a normal 2.5" laptop IDE drive can be installed. Is there any limitation on the size (Gb) of the drive? Can I connect a DMA5 drive? or must I use an older one?

My H/W config :

A1200, 2 Mb Chip RAM, 32 Mb Fast
8 Gb external 3.5" IDE Drive
52X external ATAPI Cdrom
Original case (not towerized)
Kickstart 3.1, AmigaOS 3.9

Thanks in advance.

[CDE_MusiX]

2 years ago or so I've did the same thing also with my AMIGA 1200.

With an internal drive, the computer is less ingombrant, and also faster because communicate directly with the hardware. (You're currently using the PCMCIA slot for use the HDD, but you have to use it for external things like Ethernet cards etc...)
You have a ROM 3.1, but if you wanna use the OS, you have to install it. Is available with floppies the AmigaOS 3.1, and with CDs the AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9. You can buy it on Amikit.

And please note, if you wanna install an internal HDD, you need a 2.5 inch IDE cable, also available on Amikit.

Post if you wanna know more!

[amiga92570]

you can use pretty much any 2.5" drive but if you have an A600/A1200/A4000, you're still stuck with the internal 8GB limit of the v40 IDE_scsi.device. You can use a HDD with no more than 8GB if you apply the NSD patch to the internal ROM IDE_scsi.device v40--8GB, nothing more. If you have a powerflyer/fastata1200 interface you can use any drive as it splits the drive in 4gb increments. With some custom filesystems you can utilize larger partitions. Also make sure your boot partition is within the first 4gb partiton.

[CDE_MusiX]

But this limit I not think exists if the HDD is in use with AmigaOS 3.5+, because the library of the HDD is upgraded for support 4GB+ HDD.

[rockape]

Hi,

Ive just installed an 80 Gig 2.5 inch Hard Drive in one of my spare ver 3 ROM A1200's.

I first installed WB 3.1 in the first 200 meg, then installed Smart File System (SFS) ver 1.236 (off Aminet) and then partitoned the Hard Drive with the full 80 Gig.

Regards, Michael

aka rockape

[beltrixx]

Many thanks to all for your replies!

Rockape, I think you have answered my question. I do already have my current Hard Drive partitioned with SFS and also have the OS 3.9 emergency boot disk, so I think that if you have been able to install the drive on an unexpanded (Kikstart 3.0) system, I'll manage to install it on mine perfectly!

So, again, many thanks to everybody for the replies.

[motorollin]

I would be *very* careful about using drives greater than 4GB with OS3.0. You *must* make sure the device driver you are using (in this case scsi.device) is able to write data above the 4GB barrier. If it cannot then when you get to 4GB it will start writing to the beginning of the drive and trash the RDB. Even SFS won't save your drive if scsi.device doesn't know how to write above 4GB.

--
moto

[CDE_MusiX]

You say you have the ROM ver 3.0 rev 39.106? Isn't ROM 3.1 rev 40.68?

[amigakit]

If you are using Kickstart 3.0 ROMs, and a hard disk larger than 4Gb, it is necessary to patch the scsi.device

The official patch written by Amiga Technologies requires Kickstart 3.1 ROMs and will not work with 3.0 ROMs

Commercial third party patches such as IDEFIX will work with 3.0 ROMs

[Daedalus]

I don't think he's going to be using 3.0 at any stage with this drive... Basically, if you have OS3.9 and the Boing Bags you won't have any trouble with any size of drive, provided your first partition/boot partition is completely within the first 2GB of the drive. Once that's the case, it can boot, load the newest scsi.device (version 45.something), reboot and make available the rest of the partitions. This will all be handled by the (correctly set up) SetPatch command.