CF Card: IDE vs Cardbus, any speed difference?

[Bubheart'sDaddy73]

Hi,

When using compact flash adapters, is there any benefit (speed/stability) to using internal IDE over a card bay?

Thanks.

 

[Byrd]

Yes, fixed is always best for performance with fewer overheads via the PCMCIA/Cardbus.  I'm not sure with Apple laptops, but some PC laptops of similar era don't support DMA transfers via Cardbus leaving to another performance hit.

Some Apple laptops don't particularly like booting from Cardbus devices even if supported - requiring you to insert the card after startup chime (2400c, 3400c is picky albeit not fully at Cardbus specs).

 

[Bubheart'sDaddy73]

Thanks Byrd, that's good to know. I have 7.6 and 8.5 installed on two separate CF cards, they both boot ok on my 5300ce - no problems so far - but performance feels sluggish for a 117MHz chip. Offhand, I don't suppose you can recommend either a CF-IDE or SD-IDE adapter please? Cheers!, Matt

 

[BinaryGrind]

So I've been looking into CF and SD to IDE adapters to fix up a PB1400c and a PB3400c that both had failed disks but otherwise where working great.

I've used both this CF->IDE: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07899TZF9/ and this SD->IDE: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QNB6QLC/

The CF->IDE works about as well as you would expect it too since its just a mechanical adapter, all the ATA stuff is build into the CF card.

Now, the SD->IDE adapter is super interesting. I paired the adapter with a spare SanDisk Extreme 32GB v30 microsd and was surprised how well it worked. I was initially worried about the write speed since SD cards tend to be on the slow side but if you get a card that v30 or higher it seems to work great.

Its actually faster then an original 1.3GB HDD (pulled from another PB1400cs).

CrystalDiskMark of Original HDD:

CrystalDiskMark of SD2IDE:

Now the SD->IDE adapter isn't perfect. It doesn't seem to implement the full ATA command set or it gives back bad data or something.

I had issues on my PB3400 using the adapter when trying to play with RhapsodyOS and NetBSD which went away when I swapped it for the CF->IDE or too a spare 60GB HDD drive I had.

MacOS doesn't seem to care tho. 7.5.3->8.1 on my PB1400c and MacOS 9.1 and below on my PB3400 all work perfectly.

 

[Byrd]

Thanks Byrd, that's good to know. I have 7.6 and 8.5 installed on two separate CF cards, they both boot ok on my 5300ce - no problems so far - but performance feels sluggish for a 117MHz chip. Offhand, I don't suppose you can recommend either a CF-IDE or SD-IDE adapter please? Cheers!, Matt

OS performance feels sluggish on anything 5300 - as it struggles to emulate the 68K code of OS 7.6 and and PPC code OS 8.5+; but still would have been a nice machine in the day with the active screen.  I've encountered defects in the cheap eBay style CF-IDE 2.5" adapters, they are just a bridge so look out for something which has a master/slave jumper and looks OK.

So I've been looking into CF and SD to IDE adapters to fix up a PB1400c and a PB3400c that both had failed disks but otherwise where working great.

Thanks for info - I recently found a SD-CF adapter and am planning on testing same.  Compatibility of SSDs of various guises in vintage computers is never guaranteed; but I keep trying for benefits of less whine, more battery life and performance.  Some just don't take but it's a huge benefit in PowerBooks particularly.

 

[Elfen]

Now this is a subject I know all too well; having posted about it years ago. Unfortunately, they were removed from this forum update and put into the archive which I have no understanding how to access it.

AFAIR/AFAIK, PCMCIA is 8bit and Cardbus is 16bit, and the Pre-Intel Mac Books only use PCMCIA. Putting a Cardbus into the slot and it will not work at all. Somewhere I read the PCMCIA is slower than IDE due to the controller it uses (Mac or PC). But having a PCMCIA back up on a CF Card you can throw into the slot is great. If you can find it, you can use a PCMCIA FlashRAM Card (I seen them as big as 4GB by SanDisk), and it would be just as good.

The thing is the speed of the CF Card, a 100X is just slightly better than a Had Drive in its data transfer (if on the IDE Bus), a 200X CF Card is less than double, a 250X is about double, and so on (again, on the IDE Bus).

The 5300 is a clunker of a machine at times, but its the machine I love (my 5300ce). Compared to the 1400c I used to post the information in about using a CF on the IDE Bus, I did start using the CF on both machines on the PCMCIA Bus and it worked though it was slower than working on the hard drive, but it was bearable. transferring them to the IDE Bus was a major improvement.

 I've encountered defects in the cheap eBay style CF-IDE 2.5" adapters, they are just a bridge so look out for something which has a master/slave jumper and looks OK.

In my experience (years ago) Single CF -> IDE Adapters work fine on the Macs. Dual CF -> IDE Adapters never worked on the Macs.  From the 68K PB190s to the G4 PowerBooks and iBooks - they never worked. This is even though the circuit is clean and share all the connections but the only difference is the Master/Slave Switch on either side.

Somewhere online there is a kid who claimed to have had a Dual CF -> IDE work on a G3 iBook.  Just in trying what he done, it never worked for me. But back then, I questioned it, you have a hard drive and a CD ROM Drive sharing the same IDE bus. With a Dual CF -> IDE Adapter with 2 CF Cards on it would never work for that reason - you can only have 2 devices on a shared IDE Bus and he had 3!

Now in my time, and the dozens of Single CF -> IDE Adapters I bought, I only had 1 bad one out of a lot. Even with no electronics on the card, a bad trace(s) can kill an adapter. I think that was the case in the bad adapter I have. No matter what CF I used or what machine I put it into (Mac or PC), it was dead. But out of the dozens I got only to have 1 dead board, I'm lucky.

BTW - on my work with old ThinkPads, the Dual CF -> IDE Adapter seem to work if they do not have a CD ROM Drive. Same with old Toshibas as well.

 

[paws]

Sidenote: PCMCIA is 16-bit, CardBus is a 32-bit slot, but unlike the older format it multiplexes address and data pins, so there's a little more to it than that. But I think CompactFlash is always 16 bit, it's just that CardBus slots are backwards compatible. I don't think CF cards are any faster in the newer slots, and I imagine you're right that the card slot will have a slower connection to the rest of the system than the IDE connector.

BTW, Powerbooks support Cardbus from Wallstreet onwards according to EveryMac.

 

[Elfen]

Sidenote: PCMCIA is 16-bit, CardBus is a 32-bit slot, but unlike the older format it multiplexes address and data pins, so there's a little more to it than that.

...

..

.

BTW, Powerbooks support Cardbus from Wallstreet onwards according to EveryMac.

Thank you on the corrections.

 

[Gorgonops]

But I think CompactFlash is always 16 bit, it's just that CardBus slots are backwards compatible.

If we want to be super-pedantic according to the spec CompactFlash cards should also support several alternate addressing modes, one of which is access via an 8-bit subset of the data pins. This is to make the format easier to use in some embedded applications. (And it's also used by some homebrew retrocomputing storage devices, like the XT-CF card for 8-bit bus PC compatibles.) But CF cards running in IDE adapters or plugged into a full PCMCIA slot will be running in normal 16 bit IDE mode. (They usually even support DMA modes.)

 

[paws]

Huh, interesting. So even a brand-new CF card is actually just a physical adapter away from the original PC AT bus from 1980-whatever? That's cool.

 

[Cory5412]

but performance feels sluggish for a 117MHz chip

I don't see that this has been addressed yet, so just super briefly: what stuff are you doing, and when you say "feels sluggish" do you mean compared to the original disk, or, in general?

The PowerBook 5300 is a mobile Power Mac 6200 or 6300, but with the L2 cache removed, so it's by no means going to be very speedy. I think the 5300 and 1400's 117MHz variant has the boosted L1 cache that the 6300/100 and /120 got over the 6200, but the loss of the L2 cache in the 5300 and early 1400s is severe.

This will never be a fast system, but solid state storage will help hide disk access slowness by reducing access latency, on any system.

That said, don't write it off or anything, just, buying a portable computer in 1995 involved compromises.

 

[Bubheart'sDaddy73]

Thanks for the further replies to this topic - I've now found an excellent PATA to CF-card adapter and it does seem noticeably a little quicker. I know not to expect miracles though, especially given the removal of L2 cache in this model and its early year of manufacture. The system is entirely disassembled at this point and I'll be transplanting the parts into a small-form-factor [Jonsbo C2] desktop case. I have the needed display adapters and have checked the setup; everything works fine. (Also purchased a Wombat ADB-USB adapter, so I'm ready to go.)

In anticipation of this work I purchased a micro-ATX size (made-to-measure) piece of high-quality plywood to use as a base to mount the PowerBook motherboard to, then it's a matter of arranging and securing (drilling/glueing etc.) the standoffs so that everything lines up correctly. I found the PowerBook's display size a little limiting being as my 47-yr-old eyes now need spectacles, which reduce things by around a third. Hence my reasoning for wanting to rebuild as a low-power desktop Mac (also I don't have a lot of room here, another reason I didn't want to purchase a regular desktop Mac).

To make the setup neater I'll be securing the power brick just inside the desktop case, then using a USB-powered manually-controlled fan to help cool / wick away the heat (the power brick can get a bit toasty can't it). I'm wanting to get a made-to-measure IO shield designed and 3D-printed up too, would like the little critter to look nice and tidy

Yikes, I've veered this way off-topic, I apologize! But yes, the speed of the machine is absolutely fine for my needs - the kind of software I'll be installing isn't resource-heavy, no heavy apps like Photoshop etc.

 

[Elfen]

Not to arm wrestle this thread, but on the IDE Bus, comparing a PATA SSD with a CF on an IDE/ATA Adapter, using KingSpec SSDs, I find this oddity - the KingSpec PATA SSD is slower than a SanDisk 200X CF Card but the KingSpec PATA II is faster than the SanDisk 200X CF.

Edit: Mind you, I had been doing this SSD and CF Experiment since 2005 or so and saying this on such old data.

 

[Cory5412]

the KingSpec PATA SSD is slower than a SanDisk 200X CF Card but the KingSpec PATA II is faster than the SanDisk 200X CF.

If these are three different devices, that doesn't seem very odd to me. CF cards were never the fastest IDE devices, their explicit intended use case was basically, MP3 players and saving images from cameras, so, very linear and very one-way, at any given moment. Computers, on the other hand, tend to read and write at the same time and in totally different patterns. So, if I had to guess what was happening here, it's that the KingSpec PATA II was optimized better for your use case. That was probably the intent of the original KingSpec PATA device too, but without details on what these things are it's tough to say, maybe the CF card was newer.

A 200x CF card should hypothetically be able to achieve a maximum of 30MB/sec in speed, which would nominally outdo what most beige-era PowerBooks can do on their IDE buses, although that's going to rely on a lot of things to actually achieve. (i.e. a card rated at 200x might only be able to do it when reading, and of course Mac disk i/o was basically terribad until the OS X era and "not great" until the Intel era.)

What machine(s) was this in and do you have a written record of what, specifically, your numbers were? That would help contextualize your results much better.