Operation of the GigaFile
Contents
1. Pin No Function 1 REQ 2 MSG 3 VO 4 RST 5 ACK 6 BSY 1 GND 8 DBO 9 GND 10 DB3 11 DB5 12 DB6 13 DB7 14 GND 15 C D 16 GND 17 ATN 18 GND 19 SEL 20 PARITY 21 DB1 22 DB2 23 DB4 24 GND 25 TMPWR Table 5 SCSI Pin Out of a 25 pos D SUB Page 12 Cable Assembly ACSI GigaFile GigaFile 26 pos ACSI 19 pos 1 8 2 11 3 7 4 13 5 6 6 15 1 5 8 17 9 4 10 n c 11 3 12 DC 13 2 14 n c 15 1 16 GND 0V 17 n c 18 n c 19 VCC 5V 20 14 21 19 22 9 23 12 24 16 25 10 26 18 Table 6 Cable Assembly GigaFile ACSI Interface Page 13 Cable Assembly Suska Ill C GigaFile The GigaFile is best fitted to Suska III C It is pluggable directly to the Suska III C ACSI connector without the use of a cable If a cable should be used it is a 1 1 wired 26 pos HD D SUB cable assembly with one end having a female connector and the other end male Cable Assembly SCSI GigaFile GigaFile 26 pos SCSI 25 pos 1 13 2 9 3 12 4 n c 5 11 6 n c 7 23 8 16 9 10 10 20 11 22 12 14 13 21 14 18 15 8 16 24 17 4 18 19 25 20 5 21 1 22 15 23 24 25 26 19 Table 7 Cable Assembly GigaFile SCSI Interface Page 14 GigaFile connected2. A E ef E oa d 4 XX J i ei E e 3 c D KL H vk Ke ww ZE Em Ae ER T Im 5 Vi D av En H Ka gt gt O R t LEE i n E pm e ds e i D Z gx t os m A ai RI vz L ee w ll ai S fen We AN gt ge Suska GigaFile User s Manual Rey 1 0 November 2012 Subject to change without notice W Forster Translation by John Kolak with support of Matthew Waller Contact Inventronik GmbH FinkenstraBe 48 70199 Stuttgart Internet www inventronik de www experiment s de Page 2 Email info inventronik de I want to thank all people contributing to this project Have Fun Wolfgang F rster Page 3 Table of Contents uge Tt e en ee al ca Seats Goleta Seelen 5 Descriptor et ns taten 5 Compatibility Issues concerning SD Cards ae dE 6 One Word about the Transmission Data Rate ci 2 0 22 ac annie aa 6 Bealires 2 ne Eee 6 Operation of the Gigakile unueunaseeeei tin pn Be ni 7 IB KEE TEE 7 Inserting and Operation of SD Cards uuneisaesenisklpnnan menu 8 Power Suppe a 8 Configuration of the ACSI SCSI Identification Number 8 Bus Termination in the GigaFile s SCSI Mode 9 Tricks and LEET eege eene 9 ANNEX oia e e enee eege Wiad cs allt 10 Pin Out of the 26 pos ACSUSCSI Connectors 2 ars ER 10 Pin Out of a 19 position D SUB ACSI Connector nennen sense 11 Pin Out of a 25 position D SUB SCSI Connector sseseese
3. Again the detailed information in this documentation is based on the use of a current version of the hard disk driver HDDRIVER from Uwe Seimet version 8 45 or above The reason for this choice is on the one hand the fact that HDDRIVER is the only one which has been in active development for many years from 1989 to the present and on the other hand the development of the GigaFile has taken place by intensive use and testing with HDDRIVER The GigaFile detects the type of the inserted SD card automatically In principle it is possible to remove the SD card during the operation at the ACSI port for example to exchange data with a notebook and reinsert it for further use without a restart of the Atari computer GigaFile can operate all types of SD cards There are no limitations during the operation if HDDRIVER is used SDSC cards are configured during the start up sequence of the GigaFile to handle blocks of 512 bytes SDHC and SDXC cards also work with a block size of 512 bytes It may occur that some SD cards do not work properly Reasons therefore may be incompatible supply voltage ranges or cards with block sizes different from 512 bytes The supply voltage is 5V and is connected beside the ACSI and SCSI bus signals to the 26 position HD D Sub header To connect the GigaFile to the Atari ST or to any SCSI interfaces use the respective cable adapters or one of the PCB adapters which are separately available at Inventronik GmbH To connect the Gig
4. However it may occur that in case of exotic workings of DMA logic that the measurement fails resulting in errors during read or write operations Therefore it is recommended to test the GigaFile carefully before using it in daily business If the measurement of the TDR is not working correctly there is a fall back solution using the two configuration bridges TDR2 and TDR1 located at the bottom side of the PCB see 2 for a manual configuration of the TDR The following table shows how the settings affect the TDR If either of the bridges is closed the automatic measurement of the TDR is disabled TDR2 TDR1 TDR2 TDR1 TDR2 TDR1 Closed Closed Closed Open Open Closed High Transfer Rate Medium Transfer Rate Low Transfer Rate Features The operation of the GigaFile in principle is possible at any SCSI or ACSI bus with any hard disk driver The ACSI bus has limitations concerning the maximum size of the inserted SD cards the maximum usable size is limited to 1GiB when SDSC SDHC or SDXC cards are used in conjunction with any hard disk drivers To remove this limitation the GigaFile can operate in conjunction with modern hard disk driver HDDRIVER SCSI II compatible commands Thus it is Page 6 possible to use SD cards with higher capacities than 1GiB at full capacity There are also limitations of the maximum size of a partition and the maximum number of partitions of the operating systems used TOS MINT etc
5. System Interface ACSI and the Small Computer System Interface SCSI The Configuration of the desired bus protocol is done via the connecting cable or adapter The electronic circuitry is placed on a double sided mounted printed circuit board which has an area of 50x40mm The boxed GigaFile measures 60x55x30mm Therefore it has a volume which is a factor of 80 times smaller in comparison to Atari s 20MiB hard disk drive SH205 Beside the 26 position HD D SUB connector and the connector for the SD card the GigaFile is equipped with two LEDs indicating the operation status WRR RA Se ZZ e A A ALA SJ1 SJ2 SJ3 Figure 1 GigaFile PCB To View The development of the GigaFile went hand in hand using the current version of the HDDRIVER hard disk driver from Uwe Seimet Optimizations for this driver are implemented in the digital logic so it is recommended to use a recent version of HDDRIVER 8 45 with the GigaFile The functionality and the technical data described in this manual refer to the GigaFile Slim R 01 This version number is indicated while booting with HDDRIVER _ TDR2 TDR1 Figure 2 GigaFile PCB Bottom View Page 5 Compatibility Issues concerning SD Cards All SDSC SDHC SDXC cards which can handle blocks of 512 Byte size are suited for the operation in the GigaFile Some SDSC cards with a capacity of more than 1GiB may not work properly This behaviour is described in detail in th
6. bus termination circuitry so there is a need for an external termination This is possible with a single ended termination for example from the host s side This is possible when the cable is short Another way is to use external bus terminators Please be aware that there may be only two terminators located on each end of the SCSI bus even if more than two devices are connected Deselect all internal bus terminations which are not required to meet this arrangement Tricks and Limits This chapter describes some known issues concerning the operation of the GigaFile in conjunction with the connected hardware and the hard disk driver used The contexts are often not trivial and sometimes it seems that the SD cards or the GigaFile won t work correctly The following things were found during intensive testing 1 SDSC cards with block sizes greater 512Byte Some SD cards seem not to handle blocks of 512 bytes This does not conform to the SD card specification Among these are for example 2GB SDSC cards The SDSC specification reserves 12 Bit addresses and a maximum multiplication factor of 512 So there are a maximum of 212 512 2 097 152 blocks To create 2GB cards the blocks size is not 512MB but 1024 MB Those cards are not possible to operate in the GigaFile Use SDHC cards instead 2 During the boot process from the GigaFile the transmission data rate of the connected computer will be measured as described above This is to allow the TOS
7. operating system to boot from the card correctly The reason for this feature is a race condition in TOS Booting from hard drives is not possible if the data is read too slow or too fast Although the GigaFile is developed carefully and with intensive testing to meet this requirement there is no guarantee that all the different hardware will boot from SD card in every case A workaround is to use HDDRIVER booted from a floppy disk drive or from another hard disk connected to the IDE port which can be found in STEs Stacys or STBooks 3 The GigaFile supports the HDDRIVER option Fast ACSI If HDDRIVER is used with this setting the read and write transmission data rate is about 15 higher 4 If big SD cards are connected and partitioned with HDDRIVER there is a need for the option ICD compatibility Otherwise partitions which are located beyond the 1GB limit are not detected and there is no way to access them In this case HDDIVER gives a warning during the boot process Error while reading the partition data 5 Even if more than one partition is installed with TOS Win compatibility during partitioning with HDDRIVER the Windows operating system detects only the first one This is not an error but more a poor feature of Windows 6 During Partitioning or Formatting the SD cards there are unwanted warnings or errors in this case have a look on the write protection slider of the inserted SD card Perhaps it is by accident switched to
8. write protection Page 9 Annex Pin Out of the 26 pos ACSI SCSI Connector Pin No Function 1 Data Bus Bit D7 2 GND 3 Data Bus Bit D6 4 SCSI_ATNn 5 Data Bus Bit D5 O 6 GND d 9 GND cl 3 Data Bus Bit D4 vec 11 07 8 GND Ff D2 o2 9 Data Bus Bit D3 ACK 12 ano 10 SCSI_DPn 21 anp 3 O II Data Bus Bit D2 DRQ 13 os 22 n 4 12 GND o o 13 Data Bus Bit D1 cs 14 anp 14 GND 23 ano 5 O O 15 Data Bus Bit DO RESET 15 oe 16 GND A oo ch 17 ACSL SCSIn A1 16 cnp 18 SCSI_IOn 25 anD 7 O O 19 VCC IRQ 17 04 20 ACKn VCCIO amp 21 REQn RW o 8 ano 22 CSn_DCn GND oO 23 RSTn 24 CA1_MSGn 25 INTn_BUSYn Figure 3 Layout of the 26 position HD D SUB 26 CRWn_SELn Table 3 Pin Out of the 26 pos HD D SUB Remark The pin numbers are normally marked on the D SUB connectors If not take care of the fact that the numbering is ascending in comparison to other headers and not alternating but row wise Page 10 Pin Out of a 19 position D SUB ACSI Connector Pin Nr Function 1 DBO 2 DB1 3 DB2 4 DB3 5 DB4 6 DB5 7 DB6 8 DB7 9 ICS 10 INT 11 GND 12 RESET 13 GND 14 ACK 15 GND 16 Al 17 GND 18 R W 19 DRQ Table 4 ACSI Pin Out of a 19 pos D SUB Page 11 Pin Out of a 25 position D SUB SCSI Connector
9. aFile to the Suska HI C board use a 1 1 wired 26 pos HD D Sub cable male female or connect it directly that is without cable to the ACSI header of the Suska III C The GigaFile is inactive if there is no SD card inserted Operation of the GigaFile LED Signalling Once connected to the host computer and an SD card is inserted the GigaFile is ready for preparation or use without any further action required Both LEDs green and red will indicate information about the operating condition Each of the two LEDs indicate two operating conditions as follows The green LED starts flashing for about 5s after a system start or after the SD card was removed and is inserted again The flash frequency depends on the type of the inserted SD card If an SDSC card is detected which relies on the SD card specification 1 x the frequency is about 1Hz 2 Hz results from SDSC cards relying on the SD card specification 2 x SDHC and SDXC cards cause a frequency of about 4Hz After five seconds the LED is switched on permanently but with reduced intensity indicating correct operating condition of the GigaFile The red LED is switched on with reduced intensity after a system start up and if the SD card is inserted The same condition occurs if the SD card is removed and inserted again This condition means that the Card is operating with a reduced transmission data rate which is important for the TOS boot option and also to operate the GigaFile correctly on
10. ards In this way there is also the possibility of a complete data loss on the inserted card If the user is not completely aware of the behaviour of the operating system in connection with the hard disk driver it is strongly recommended to change the cards after the host has been shut down Power Supply There are several possibilities to power the GigaFile This mainly depends on the system to which it is connected In principle there are the following three options 1 Connected Suska III C 2 Connected to a 19 pos ACSI port 3 As SCSI device for example in conjunction with a 25 pos D SUB adapter Configuration of the ACSI SCSI Identification Number On the top of the printed circuit board of the GigaFile there are three configuration bridges solder types see 1 The respective ID number is selected shortening these bridges partially or entirely The following table lists all possible ID numbers and the respective settings of the bridges The default factory setting of the GigaFile is ID 0 SJ1 SJ2 SJ3 ID SJ1 SJ2 SJ3 ID Open Open Open 0 Closed Open Open 4 Open Open Closed 1 Closed Open Closed 5 Open Closed Open 2 Closed Closed Open 6 Open Closed Closed 3 Closed Closed Closed 7 Table 2 ID Configuration Page 8 Bus Termination in the GigaFile s SCSI Mode A correct bus termination is a prerequisite for a stable and accurate operation The GigaFile is not equipped with an internal
11. e section Tricks and Limits To verify if a card is suitable or not it can for example be inserted into a card reader connected to a Windows PC Open the formatting dialogue There is a setting Cluster Size In conjunction with the FAT file system you should see cluster sizes of 8192 Bytes or less In this case the SD card is usable in the GigaFile One Word about the Transmission Data Rate The GigaFile is based on block orientated mass storage devices SD cards These cards are read and written block wise so once it starts to read or write a block there is no way to interrupt at any time until the block is completely transferred If for example 10 blocks are written the connected host computer must deliver 5120 bytes without any interruption Although the GigaFile theoretically may read and write 2MiB per second it is adjusted in such a way that the direct memory address DMA channels of the connected computers Atari Suska can keep up with the GigaFile transmission data rate Thus the following data transfer rates results Atari ST read Atari ST write Suska III C Suska III C TT read TT write read write 600kByte s 500kByte s 1200kByte s 1000kByte s 1800kByte s 1600kByte s Table 1 Achievable Data Transfer Rates To meet the correct adjustment the TDR is measured during the first access to the GigaFile In this way it is ensured that the DMA channels are not operated beyond the maximum transmission speed
12. seseeeeeserssereresressrseresressesereessseesseeesseres 12 Cable Assembly ACSI Gis ables u RD 13 Cable Assembly Suska Ul C Gig aPile sain usa stand ccvaded Gin eege 14 Cable Assembly SCSI GigabPile susanne 14 GigaFile connected to the internal Bus of STE and Stacy 15 e 16 Index of Tables Table 1 Achievable Data Transfer EE 6 Table 22119 e EE EE 8 Table 3 Pin Out of the 26 pos HD DSUB aunucn sn Bir ee 10 Table 4 ACSI Pin Out of a 19 pos D SUB see ih De nel 11 Tabhle 5 SCSI Pin QO tof a23 pos 12 Table 6 Cable Assembly GigaFile ACSI Interface 13 Table 7 Cable Assembly GigaFile SCSI Interface ae 14 Table 8 MegaSTE J402 and Stacy J11 30pos Header to GigaFile HD D Sub 15 Index of Figures Fisure 12 GigaFile PCB To View anne 5 Figure 2 GigaFile PCB Bottom View een ae 5 Figure 3 Layout of the 26 position HD D SUB 22 22 22 Ba 10 Page 4 Introduction Description Suska GigaFile is a solid state disk intended to work on Atari ACSI or SCSI interfaces The physical memory SD cards are foreseen In this way the GigaFile is widely configurable using SDSC cards with small capacity up to 2GiB SDHC cards with high capacity from 2GiB to 32 GiB or SDXC cards with capacities greater than or equal 32GiB So this product should meet any individual requirements The focus of development of the GigaFile was the compatibility to both bus protocols the Atari Computer
13. systems with slow direct memory access DMA channels Access to the SD card is indicated with light pulses of full intensity Once HDDRIVER become active the transmission data rate to or from the GigaFile is measured and correct parameters are adjusted If the connected computer is capable of handling high data rates the weak red LED is switched off This happens for example when the GigaFile is connected to the Suska hardware to TT computers or overclocked STs If the connected computer cannot perform high data transmission rates the red LED indicates this with a weak red Page 7 Inserting and Operation of SD Cards SD cards in standard form factor are inserted upside down contacts on top into the GigaFile SD card slot Removing and inserting works with a push pull mechanism As soon as an SD card is removed and another one is inserted it will be initialized immediately and the card parameters are switched transparently to the hard disk driver The GigaFile reads the Write Protection Sliders of SD cards so the respective warnings will be shown if there is an attempt to write to a protected card Attention If the cards are removed during read or write access a complete data loss cannot be ruled out If cards are set up with HDDRIVER and the option TOS WIN compatible partitions it is possible to exchange data from the GigaFile to any personal computer without restarting the host of the GigaFile Do not remove cards and insert different c
14. to the internal Bus of STE and Stacy ey Joja mw aam ann voor 28 27 ond eat C vew 26 26 REITER 21 Senses 20 19 csnpon C aono Pno aen 46 17 Rsm Data Busto 16 15 Daa Bos BtD7 gt Data Bus BIDE 14 13 D ta Bus Signalweiterleitung zur externen Data Bus BtD5 gt 12 11 Data Bus BitD5 gt 19 pol ACSI Buchse Bei Fehlen Datenbus Signale von MegaSTE Data Bus Bit D4 gt 10 9 Data Bus Bit D4 gt des internen Host Adapters Pins U403 74LS245 kommend entsprechend br cken damit Data Bus BtD3 gt 8 7 DataBusBitD3 gt ext ACSI funktioniert Data Bus BtD2 gt 6 5 DataBusBitD2 gt 2 1 4 3 6 5 8 7 10 9 Data Bus BtD1 gt 4 3 DataBus BitD1 gt en Data Bus BtDOo gt 2 1 Data Bus BitDO gt Mit freundlicher Unterst tzung von U Stapelkamp Table 8 MegaSTE J402 and Stacy J11 30pos Header to GigaFile HD D Sub Page 15 Notes Page 16
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search