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Help: IDE to Compact Flash not working

Fizzbinn

Well-known member
Drive Setup usually is not keen on formatting what it sees as non-Apple drives.
Yes, but historically didn't that only apply to SCSI disks and Drive Setup? Back in the day I recall no such limitations with IDE disks of that era. Later, toward the end of the IDE (now called PATA) spinning disk era I think manufactures stopped supporting some of the old PIO modes some early IDE Macs were limited to, and I believe there are some disk size LBA limitations as well. I think some of the challenges in gettin our old Macs working with CF/SD/flash substitutes is how good these devices/adapters are at appearing to the system as a late 90s IDE hard drive. :cool:
 

Fizzbinn

Well-known member
I can’t think of a good reason why the 40 pin adapter works while the 44 doesn’t, they have exactly the same guts on them. If it’s easy for you to chuck it into another machine I’d sanity check to see if it could be defective. (That’s a downside of these super cheap electronics from China, I don’t think QA is really a thing.)

Since I have it out for other work, I'm going to try these in my UMAX SuperMac C500. Def could be be a bad adapter.
 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
Later, toward the end of the IDE (now called PATA) spinning disk era I think manufactures stopped supporting some of the old PIO modes some early IDE Macs were limited to, and I believe there are some disk size LBA limitations as well.

I'm not going to say this definitively because I haven't tried them on the era of machines we're dealing with here but the scuttlebutt is that issues with not supporting some of the more obscure data transfer modes is a significant issue for many IDE->SATA adapters. (And by extension those adapters that go from PATA to mSATA or M.2 SSDs.) Generally it seems like they work fine in anything that supports UDMA (ATA-4), and they also support the slowest PIO modes (needed at boot time even on modern controllers) but they barf on some of the higher PIO modes and the various DMA Single-Word modes defined in the ATA-1/2 standards. This makes them very hit-and-miss on mid-90's computers even if you ignore LBA/disk size issues.

I've also heard they sometimes don't do CHS addressing at all either, which can also be a problem with CF cards, and that deep-sixes compatibility with even older machines. The IDE->SD adapters at least seem to handle that adequately.
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
Yes, but historically didn't that only apply to SCSI disks and Drive Setup? Back in the day I recall no such limitations with IDE disks of that era. Later, toward the end of the IDE (now called PATA) spinning disk era I think manufactures stopped supporting some of the old PIO modes some early IDE Macs were limited to, and I believe there are some disk size LBA limitations as well. I think some of the challenges in gettin our old Macs working with CF/SD/flash substitutes is how good these devices/adapters are at appearing to the system as a late 90s IDE hard drive. :cool:
Combing one of the SD adapters mentioned earlier in the thread, I was able to dd my Wallstreet’s 2 GB IDE drive to a spare 8 GB SD card on another machine to verify booting off the adapter before erasing the original owner’s files.

When I went and loaded up a CD-R with 9.2.2, I was able to nuke, initialize, and load without any problems. So I’m assuming by the last Drive Setups they didn’t care, or the image must have been patched.

By contrast the unlatched 7.5 Disk Utils floppy I was using on my Duo’s BlueSCSI, didn’t work for me. Not that I’ve had any luck with that Hd SC setup in BasilliskII for that matter. Even trying to fudge data from the label of the Duo’s old DOA drive didn’t help, lol.
 

MikMac

Member
OK, the comedy - of sorts - continues!!!

I got in the mail today two new compact flash cards. One was a 32GB SanDisk Extreme card rated at 120MB/s and UDMA7. The other was the exact same card as Gruz used in his YouTube video - a Verbatim 4GB with no bragging rights at all (at least none printed on the card or the packaging.

The high quality SanDisk didn't work. Same problems as with all the other cards (except the 32MB card).

Guess what happened with the almost-generic Verbatim 4GB card? It worked! As soon as the Performa booted, it recognized that there was a blank drive attached and asked me to name it and initialize it. I did, and BOOM: working compact flash drive! I did NOT use the Drive Setup tool. In fact, the Drive Setup tool was absolutely no help at all. If the OS doesn't recognize the drive and prompt you to initialize it, Drive Setup isn't going to help either.

So... after giving up on it and forgetting that I hadn't received my Amazon order of two additional cards until they showed up today, the card that works is the one I thought was least likely to work! (I've never had good experiences with Verbatim branded media.) I should have trusted in the Gruz!

For those just joining us, here are cards that are known to work and not work:

WORKING CARDS:
View attachment 33248

Cards that definitely do NOT work:
View attachment 33249

Here's a link to the Verbatim 4GB card on Amazon ($13). They offer a 16GB one, but it is listed as "Premium", so who knows if it will work or not. (Note: the same Amazon page offers a "Premium" 4GB card too. The one I have is NOT the "Premium" one.)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009X3MNU/

By the way: I tried a Compact Flash to SD adapter (pictured above), which did NOT work no matter what SD card I put in it (even a SanDisk 1GB SD card). That specific CF-to-SD adapter is known to be crappy. I would have liked to try the one from iFlash (http://www.iflash.xyz), but I wasn't going to spend $28 just to get one, and I wasn't about to take apart my working (upgraded) iPod Mini that has one in it just to test it out. Though the iFlash adapter is known to work better than the Chineseium one pictured above.

Sadly I spent over $100 on CF cards that I have no other use for in order to get something working. Frankly, I would have been better off buying an old IDE HDD. It would have been cheaper and almost certainly would work (mine did). The drive I used is a Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax 16 (part # CP157287-01, manuf date: 30APR2003) You can find them on www.newegg.com for $37 and get a LOT more storage for your money.

So if you have a use for CF cards and need any very gently used ones, let me know! LOL
Thank you for this. I was loosing my mind trying to get this to work on my Performa 638CD. I was was just going to book from an external SCSI drive.
 

Realitystorm

Well-known member
Thank you for this. I was loosing my mind trying to get this to work on my Performa 638CD. I was was just going to book from an external SCSI drive.
I found that the industrial CF cards all work. They identify themselves as IDE drives.
 

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MacJunky

Well-known member
Typically these days I use Verbatim CF cards, but I recently have played with a generic SD to CF adapter in a search for more cost-effective storage. It is currently the boot device used with my 631CD board. I have Mac OS 7.6.1 installed and had to use the APS PowerTools driver for it to be bootable.

I am not very fond of SD cards in general, the speeds are often not up to par with CF cards in my older devices. I have had a LOT of SD cards fail over the years, unlike CF cards. Looking at the prices and availability of CF cards these days I may not have much of a choice soon.
PXL_20230922_061154172.2.jpgAPS PowerTools.gif
 
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