Welcome to atapi.device by Elaborate Bytes! Copyright © 1994, 1995 Elaborate Bytes, Oliver Kastl GENERAL This device allows you to use an ATAPI CD-ROM drive with the A4000 or A4000T embedded IDE controller. A4000 users can use the very popular and cheap CD-Roms for PCs without any major disadvantages against SCSI CD-Rom drives. The major advantage for A4000 users without a SCSI controller is, that they don't have to buy one. The major advantage for A4000 users with a SCSI controller is, that they have an unused IDE port in their machine anyway and SCSI CD-Roms are usually more expensive. The device maps SCSI-II commands to ATAPI packets using the standard Commodore HD_SCSICMD interface, so any "CD-Rom specific" programs (Multisession Filsystems, Audio Players and Photo-CD readers) designed for SCSI-II CD-Roms should work. This has been tested with CacheCDFS, PlayCD, CD32-Emulator (all written by me) and PhotoWorX (an excellent PhotoCD Reader by Corporate Media). However, I cannot guarantee that every SCSI-II specific program will work, but I do not expect any major problems. The device is fully interrupt driven and will use only a small amount of CPU time for the transfer (exceptions are listed below). COMPATIBILITY WITH EXISTING IDE HARDDISK Every (and I mean it!) IDE drive that works with the original Commodore scsi.device WILL continue to work if the a4000_atapi.device is installed. The reason is simple: My device will use the code of the Commodore scsi.device (if present) to access the IDE harddisk. If you connect an ATAPI CD-Rom and you harddisk stops to work, this usually is a hardware, not a software problem. Check cables & jumpers. Some harddisks must be rejumpered, if a slave drive is connected. Consult the manual that came with your harddrive before doing so or ask your dealer for assistance. Make sure, the CD-ROM is configured as a slave device. Some CD-Roms (e.g. the Wearnes CDA-120) have an option to enable or disable interrupts. As the a4000_atapi.device is interrupt driven to reduce CPU use, it will NOT work if you disable interrupt generation on the CD-Rom drive. Please consult the CD-Rom installation manual. USING MORE THAN TWO UNITS Starting with version 6.x, atapi.device is able to support up to 4 units. This may be up to two harddisks or any number of CD-Roms. For this feature to work, you need a special cable which has one connector for the Amiga IDE port and four connectors for different IDE units. This cable will be shortly available from official Elaborate Bytes distributers. This cable will in fact add a "second" full operational and independend IDE port to the system. (WOW! How is this possible? I would really love to share this secret, but I am not allowed to tell :-) Connecting the CD-Rom to the "second" IDE port will effectively hide the CD-Rom from Commodore's scsi.device during boot. As a side effect this eliminates any problems which could be caused by the scsi.device which may be confused by the presence of a CD-Rom. Connecting the CD-Rom to the "second" port will eliminate any possible master/slave problems with existing harddisks. A600 & A1200 Support for A600 and A1200 has been added. The device is the same "atapi.device" and will work with both machines. You should use the SetAtapiSpeed command to maximize the CD-Rom performance. Using more than two units is not possible with the A600. TESTED DRIVES A couple of drives have been tested with the atapi.device. The test configuration was an A4000/40 with and without Oktagon 2008 SCSI controller, with and without an IDE Harddisk (Quantum Maverick 540 or Seagate ST328A). The drives were selected always as the slave device, even if no IDE Harddisk was installed. All CD-Rom drives which comply with ATAPI specs 1.2 are expected to work. Recommended drives (work 100%): Mitsumi FX-001DE (2x speed) (Don't mix this up with the FX-001D! The FX-001, FX-001D and LU005 are NO atapi devices and will NOT work! Connecting a non IDE/ATAPI device to the Amiga IDE port may damage both your Amiga and your CD-Rom!) Mitsumi FX-300 (3x speed) Mitsumi FX 400 (4x speed) Chinon CDS-545 (4x speed) <-- very good drive!!!!! Toshiba XM-5302B (4x speed) <-- very good drive!!!!! The Toshiba drive is very short and fits best in A4000 drive bay! Wearnes CDD-220A (4x speed) Acer 6825-P (2x speed) Wearnes CDD-120A (2x speed) Chinon CDS-525I (2x speed) Sony CDU-55E (2x speed) <-- Audio play requires CacheCDFS 2.5 or better This drive is NO LONGER supported: Elitegroup Vertos 300SSD (2x speed) TESTED FILESYSTEMS The device has been tested with the CacheCDFS (yes, this is written by me, too) and my PlayCD Audio player. It works very well with my CD32-Emulator. However, I don't expect any problems with other filesystems. INSTALLATION Installation is simple. Connect an IDE-ATAPI drive to your IDE port. You should jumper the drive as a SLAVE device, even if you do not have an IDE harddrive connected, as the A4000 may not boot if it encounters an ATAPI CD-Rom as the Master device. However, IF your Amiga does boot with a CD-Rom as the master device, you could use two CD-Roms at the same time. The unit numbers will be 0 (for the master) and 1 (for the slave). If you have an IDE harddrive, you should buy a standard PC-IDE harddisk cable, as the original A4000 cable is too short for both an IDE harddisk and a CD-Rom drive. The harddisk should be jumpered as the Master device and the CD-Rom as the slave, otherwise the Amiga will not recognize the harddrive. Copy the a4000_atapi.device to your devs: directory. The supplied installer script will do this for you. Now you must tell your CD-Rom FileSystem about the device. This differs from product to product, please consult the manual of the Filesystem you wish to use. With CacheCDFS, simply run the CacheCDFS installation program. It will automatically detect your CD-Rom. A CD-Rom connected as the slave device will have unit number 1, which will be the common case. A CD-Rom connected as the master device will have unit number 0. The name of the device driver is a4000_atapi.device. KNOWN PROBLEMS It is possible, that some drive models cannot be mounted after a reboot, because they need some time to wake up after a hardware reset. (On a PC it takes often a long time until the CD-Rom is accessed) This depends on how "fast" your startup-sequence reaches the mount command. If you have this problem, add a delay (e.g. Wait 3) before the mount command in your startup-sequence. That's it! Please send comments, bug reports, etc to: Elaborate Bytes Oliver Kastl Am Westpark 5 81373 Munich Germany Compuserve: 100447,3361 Internet: 100447.3361@compuserve.com To order the CacheCDFS, the CD32 Emulator, the atapi.device or all of the above, please contact: Hirsch & Wolf OHG Mittelstr. 33 56564 Neuwied Germany Tel.: ++49-2631-83990 Fax.: ++49-2631-839931 or NBG-USA, Inc. 482 Holly Ave. St. Paul MN55102 USA Tel.: ++1-612-2909447 Fax.: ++1-612-2909449