PCMCIA Slot

[Delshay]

Can PCMCIA slot be directly supported from the CD of OS4.2 if and when released? This makes it possible for any back-up on a Compact Flash card to transfer data to hard drive.

Ie make slot active so card is detected.

Tested and working OS4.1 with CF driver & FAT95.

[Delshay]

Just to add this slot may come important to transfer large amount of data from another device where other users have USB port.

[thomasrapp]

What hinders you to restore your backup from CF right now? You can make a boot floppy with CF drivers. You can probably even boot OS 4.1 from CF card using such a boot floppy.

[Delshay]

Its not a problem now,but was before I got online. The problem was after installation of OS4.1 there is limited driver to get online via PCMCIA slot. It not a problem downloading the files from another computer,but getting it onto hard drive or floppy disk. Having downloading the files (CF driver/FAT95 & 3COM driver) onto a microSD the problem was how do I get these files onto amiga hard drive/floppy with PCMCIA port not being active. Lucky for me I had a old hard drive OS3.9 with the driver for PCMCIA port active,from here I transfer to floppy then to OS4.1.

NOTE: my PC does not have a floppy drive.

[thomasrapp]

Having downloading the files (CF driver/FAT95 & 3COM driver) onto a microSD the problem was how do I get these files onto amiga hard drive/floppy with PCMCIA port not being active.

Write them to CD-R/RW. You ask for the OS 4.2 CD to contain CF drivers, so you have a CD drive and can read CDs.

[Delshay]

Having downloading the files (CF driver/FAT95 & 3COM driver) onto a microSD the problem was how do I get these files onto amiga hard drive/floppy with PCMCIA port not being active.

Write them to CD-R/RW. You ask for the OS 4.2 CD to contain CF drivers, so you have a CD drive and can read CDs.

Yes I could do that,but would it not be easier to have one or the other driver on the installation CD and with updates now delivered via amiupdate,network driver(s) is also going to be important for all users. Some basic drivers will be welcome in-order to get users on-line without going to another computer to get drivers.

It would be better to get on-line from the installation CD.

[JurassicC]

How about if the installer asked you to select a third party driver at the end of the standard installation process. you could then select the device from floppy ,another partition or cdrw and have it copied to devs:networks ?

[Delshay]

Having third party drivers installed after normal installation is not a bad idea. I do believe there is a new file system that is window compatible (correct me here if I am wrong) so all what is needed is a built in driver for PCMCIA slot for CF card.

[JurassicC]

I've never used the PCMCIA slot as a drive. Mine has only ever been used rarely for a squirrel scsi interface only.
Can you explain how you use the PCMCIA slot as a Drive and what hardware you use to allow the use of a compact flash card in it.
I'm assuming some sort of PCMCIA to CF addaptor but what driver and file system are you using ?

[Delshay]

Software as stated above.

A quick test was done with 128GB compact flash in PCMCIA slot. I was able to format & transfer large files from hard drive with no problems.

128GB I do believe is the limit with current driver.

Compact Flash: Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB.