Hard drives in RISC PC and Iyonix

A long time ago I must have temporarily installed the hard drive from a Risc PC in an Iyonix to copy everything across to the new machine.

Is there any reason why a 2004-era Iyonix hard drive should not work in a RISC OS 4.02 RiscPC so that I can retrieve data from a failed Iyonix? I can’t even remember whether RiscPCs can take two internal hard drives. If there’s any danger of rendering the Iyonix hard drive unreadable by sticking it in the Risc PC then I would rather avoid the risk and find another solution!

I presume that an ARMX6 uses a differnet type of drive from the Iyonix?

@ Matthew

Is there any reason why a 2004-era Iyonix hard drive should not work in a RISC OS 4.02 RiscPC

AFAIR, the two handle the disc differently.

It is possible to use the disc (just as a clean disc) on the RiscPC as long as the disc is not bigger than 60/80GB AFAIR (probably the actual limit is a bit more).

I can’t even remember whether RiscPCs can take two internal hard drives.

Yes, the RiscPC can have 2 internal HDDs, but the IDE on the RiscPC is quite picky, so I do not recommend it.

I have one of my RiscPCs with 2 HDDs (both mechanical) and roughly of few GB each, both from 1996, (I use the 2nd HDD to boot ARMLinux and BSD), works totally fine. Then, I have another RiscPC, also with 2 HDDs, where the 2nd is an SSD 60GB, works fine if I use either one or the other disc, but not both at the same time. This is probably caused by some issue with the NIC (IIRC) or because the 2nd disc is like 60GB size.

What you could try to do, if you have a UniPOD Podule, is to use the UniPOD IDE instead of that wonky IDE on the RiscPC. The UniPOD IDE definitely supports up to 128GB HDD and works great with modern SSD etc… so, it’s definitely closer to the Iyonix time than the IDE on the RiscPC motherboard. However, the way they partition the disc/handle Filecore could be different which leads to first point.

In my experience (I had one of my Iyonix where the IDE stopped working, typical issue on the Iyonix btw) and had to wait to get another Iyonix to recover the data from the disc. So, maybe, it’s worth a call to RComp or CJE?

Good luck!

Is there any reason why a 2004-era Iyonix hard drive should not work in a RISC OS 4.02 RiscPC so that I can retrieve data from a failed Iyonix?

Check the master/slave links on the two drives you’re trying to get working on the same IDE cable

It is possible to use the disc (just as a clean disc) on the RiscPC as long as the disc is not bigger than 60/80GB

With RISCOS 4.02 the disc size limit is 256GB the same as RISCOS 5 on the Iyonix, though the Iyonix is restricted to DMA on the first 128GB.

The only issue with the RISCPC is if the drive doen’t support PIO mode on its interface and of course the drive does become inefficient as far as usage is concerned the larger it is.

The drive could also be attached to an external caddy which you could use via USB to another RISCOS machine but of course the speed of transfer will be limited on that.

If you have a RISC OS Raspberry Pi and a USB PATA drive caddy, you can read the Risc PC’s disc with no problems. Use ShareFS to access it from the Risc PC, then there is no worries about drive size issues.

@ Doug

The only issue with the RISCPC is if the drive doen’t support PIO mode on its interface and of course the drive does become inefficient as far as usage is concerned the larger it is.

I wouldn’t be so confident with the RiscPC IDE… I have seen it giving all sorts of issues especially with big hdd. There can be problems with two discs also if you have the NIC port in the NIC port slot fitted and in use. So it’s not just full support for PIO in my experience.

In the case I have mentioned above both the discs support PIO really well, I use the same discs on my Amigas (the amiga has a better IDE interface than the RiscPC, but still using it in PIO) they work totally fine, no issues whatsoever. However, on the RiscPC they have some issues in certain configurations.

the amiga has a better IDE interface than the RiscPC

EVERY computer has a better IDE interface than the Risc PC. And it is mostly ADFS’ fault for being born before relevant ATA things got standardised and then – in true Acorn fashion – not being updated. But partly also the hardware’s fault, trying to reimplement the A5000 IDE faithfully (to avoid having to change ADFS too much probably). Ever tried to connect a removable drive to ADFS? SyQuest or ZIP back in the day? A disaster.

Basically all 3rd party IDE podules are better. APDL ideA and Blitz, Simtec IDE/Unipod, Yellowstone RapIDE, even the homemade stuff with ZIDEFS on it.

I don’t remember if Jon Abbott’s ADFS patches were only for the RISC OS 3.1x vintage version, or if they also work with say RISC OS 4.xx. Gives you the typical “how to softload” problem however.

I presume that an ARMX6 uses a differnet type of drive from the Iyonix?

ARMX6 uses S-ATA, but using a converter might work (I had success the other way round, connecting S-ATA writers to the IYONIX). But you could also just connect the IYONIX’ disc via an IDE-USB adapter to the ARMX6 (or any computer running RISC OS 5 having USB).

Thank you for all the advice. I decided to dig out a USB external IDE/SATA caddy. I’d forgotten that it might work with a FileCore disc in it, as I’ve only ever used it with a Linux format drive. Unscrewed it to get the drive out. Then got Iyonix out from under desk to get the drive out. Before unscrewing the case I thought I’d just try the power button again, and hey presto, it was working today!

Latest source code now backed up, and full backup of drive underway.

nice Matthew! :)

Good to hear you got at the source code.

I also hope you checked the integrity of the data on the hard disc first before and after of the backup just in case.