CF Card Adapters Compared

[rezwits]

I recently compared the speeds of two different CF Adapters

PCI ATA 133

http://www.ebay.com/...eUAAOSwcwhVQZ6Z

IDE Adapter (1)

http://www.ebay.com/...7gAAOSwgQ9VrbWO

SanDisk 64GB

http://www.bestbuy.c...2&skuId=2037002

PowerCable(s)

http://www.ebay.com/...I4AAOSw14xWL8Gk

the this other adapter which stated UDMA:

Addonics, IDE Adapter (2)

http://www.addonics....s/adebidecf.php

Long story short, even tho the Addonics states UDMA, I was only able to get less than DMA-33.

The cheaper one from above, came in at around 3MB/s faster in 3 tests I performed.

13MB/s vs 10MB/s

So go with the cheap China ones if you have a Beige G3 even with an ATA card, only for convenience,

I really pulled my hair out hoping to get at least around 40MB/s,

and the SanDIsk Card is rated at 800x 120MB/s.

Addonics has a non-female version which I would have to mount in the hard drive bay, that they say up to 133/MBs but I just don't think they can deliver in this machine:

http://www.addonics.com/products/aeudmacf.php

Says up to UDMA-6 (133MB/s), but I can't find any that would fit into a PCI ATA card conveniently, without ribbons

So don't waste your time, unless somebody wants to try the UDMA-6 one listed above.

Hope this helps a little...

Laters...

 

[Elfen]

None do, not even the actual hard drive or SSD in a Mac. The Mac IDE/ATA interface it flawed greatly.

Things are slightly better in the PC side of the equation but its not perfect there either.

 

[Elfen]

Much of the ATA speed of the IDE is based on the Data Bus Speed of the Mac/PC in question.

For what ever reason, the Mac has bottle necks in several places where in the PC there are none or a few. I stated that in a couple of places n the forum:

(starting about around here) https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23406-booting-from-a-compact-flash-drive/page-2&do=findComment&comment=244629

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/26798-cf-as-a-hd/

On scathing example is on laptops... Bear with me because it is going to be long.

As we may or may not all know, on a laptop the PCMCIA is directly tied to the DataBus through a PCMCIA chip, while the IDE/ATA is tied to a slot ID either NuBus or PCI before going to the DataBus. So the PCMCIA goes through at the speed of the DataBus and the IDE/ATA goes through speed of the interface slot which may be slower that the Databus. Because of this:

• The PB190, which has a Databus speed of 25MHz, will boot slower on the PCMCIA than on the IDE/ATA.
• The PB5300ce, which has a Databus speed of 33.333MHz, will boot faster on the PCMCIA than on the IDE/ATA.
  
  Strange is..
• The PB1400, which has a Databus speed of 30MHz, will boot faster on the PCMCIA than on the IDE/ATA but slower than the PB5300ce. Despite having the faster CPU, the Databus is slower and thus the PCMCIA will be slower. And this is true up to the PB3400.
• The PB3400 can have either a 30MHz DataBus or a 40MHz Databus, depending on the CPU it may have. The faster CPU will have the faster Databus and have the faster boot than the PB5300ce. But the slower PB3400 which has the slower Databus will be beaten by the PB5300ce despite having the slower CPU.

Except for the PB190, the PCMCIA on the laptops will boot and perform faster than the IDE/ATA interface. The lines will get blurred with the G3.

Do note that I am using a 200x or 400x SanDisk CF of either 4GB or 8GB on Pre-OSX systems. So I'm running at about 60mb/sec max.

• On my G3 Wall Street (266MHz CPU and I believe 66MHz Databus speed), using a slower CF (200X @ 30mb/sec) booting from either PCMCIA or IDE/ATA, it is about the same. But booting from the faster CF, the PCMCIA wins.

From here, I do not have any other Mac laptops with PCMCIA except for my G4 17in PowerBook and that is on OSX. I do have several iBooks with CFs and KingSpec SSDs (PATA II Series) in their IDE/ATA, and I find them to be equal in booting speeds. I did tried out a KingSpec PATA Series and it was terribly slow, but their PATA II Series is wickedly fast.

So the same must apply to the desktops - due to the interface speed of the NuBus or PCI and the system's Databus speed will limit the IDE/ATA interface on the card. The card could say that it is an ATA133, but unless the Databus and Interface Speed is superior to the ATA rating, one will not see it. On a G3 Blue/White with a Databus Speed of 66MHz will never see 133mb/sec the card is rated for because its Databus is not capable of handling it.

That is the wrench in the works, now to find the monkey who threw it in there!

 

[rezwits]

Yeah, I figured I would at least be able to get 66MHz bus speeds tho around 40MB/s to 50MB/s, Not necc' 133MHz speeds tho, which was sad.  But I will settle for 13.333MB/s I suppose, it's snappy.  It's better than 2.5MB/s or 5MB/s...  And the other thing is it's NOT GOING TO DIE, but if one CF does die, I will just get a replacement with NEW technology (the CF Card) thanks to Photographers of the world.  And my machines will run forever, and that's what counts the most!

 

[Elfen]

In the very least you can make a very quick back up of your system with 2 CFs on that card you are using. Just put in the second CF when backing it up, drag and drop files from the first CF and wait a couple minutes.  ;D

 

[meall]

I have 2 CF card adapter and I'be been trying them in my beige G3 desktop, but for some reason I cannot figure out why it is so slow. But when I say slow, I do to talk about access speed compared like you do here. It is slow as it can take 5-10 minutes before the computer sees the CF card as a potential disk (it kinda freezes for a while) and then, when I format it, it failed and then take forever to come back to ask me to initialize it again.

Is there something specific I need to do to have the card at least working normally even if not light speed?

Thank you

 

[rsolberg]

It could certainly be a faulty CF card based on your description. I use dozens at work and occasionally one will corrupt an image or report it needs to be formatted and then resume normal operation for a while after being formatted. If I do a more thorough format, such as a secure erase in OS X disk utility, usually it will report it can't complete the format. Further investigation tends to reveal faulty memory or other issues in the CF card. It's also worth making sure no pins are damaged on your CF adapters.

 

[meall]

It could certainly be a faulty CF card based on your description. I use dozens at work and occasionally one will corrupt an image or report it needs to be formatted and then resume normal operation for a while after being formatted. If I do a more thorough format, such as a secure erase in OS X disk utility, usually it will report it can't complete the format. Further investigation tends to reveal faulty memory or other issues in the CF card. It's also worth making sure no pins are damaged on your CF adapters.

I just put the card in my computer, and it was detected no issue, looks to be working just fine. 

the pins on the adaptor also looks great. 

There's a few jumpers on the card:

- JP1: power source (default external, which make sense as I'm using the on board connector to the HDD power cable)

- JP2: for the voltage (5V by default), other option is 3.3V

- JP3: Master or Slave, this one very obvious...

 

[meall]

the more I look into it, the more I thing the G3 has a problem with the IDE controllers... I move the computer on another table to have more place to investigate, and then the HDD was unable to boot on the Mac OS 8.5 partition it has. I move the HDD to my Performa 6360, and it booted on that same partition no problem. Old hardware failing

 

[meall]

I meant, I should buy one of the SCSI adaptor for SD cards...

is it still available? the links on the first page points to terminated auctions...