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