Compact Flash in se/30

[JDW]

I'm not too sure I follow about 'hardware support'.

I shall be more specific then. I defined "hardware" as "the hardware that is used to interface a given flash memory to the SCSI bus of the old Mac." I was NOT talking about Mac hardware.

Some digital cameras don't support all the speed of some cards. Why? Because they lack hardware support. In like manner, I felt that if a given flash card adapter lacks support for all the speedy features of a given card, how then could it pass along all those speed benefits to the Mac.

So my question here has nothing to do with the speed limitations of the Mac's SCSI bus.

Now have a look at the specifications of the Extreme IV card. Read and Write speeds of 45MB/second?!?!? That should blow away even a fast SCSI spinning platter disk for both reads and writes on any SE/30. But if you connect it up and if it doesn't blow away a spinning platter 7200rpm or even a 10krpm drive, why not? Is it not because the adapter used to connect the CF card doesn't support all the speed of the card? If the adapter does support the speed, then you should feel a difference in speed between the flash drive and a super fast spinning platter disk -- in other words, the flash disk should be faster, much faster, in both reading and writing.

 

[MacSE/30]

I can confirm that "Microtech PCD 47B" and SanDisk Ultra II 4GB CompactFlash card is working nicely in Q650. I couldn't try it in my SE/30's cause both of them require a recap. It should work in SE/30 as well.

Microtech PCD 47B is an internal unit with PCMCIA Type I/II/III, CompactFlash and SmartMedia slots. However, CF card in a PCMCIA module did not work. The converter module I used was very cheap stuff so with another module it could work.

Formatting the CF card was troublesome. Since the card comes in DOS format it must be re formatted to HFS. Mounting was very difficult. Apple HD Setup (patched) and Drive Setup couldn't mount. Mt. Everything mounted it but it couldn't been formatted by system. Lido7 mounted and formatted the card but after start up the card didn't mount so the driver installed by Lido7 was no good. Hard Disk Toolkit did all the tricks and now I can boot from CF card. Although after Lido7 format I had to reformat the card in a PC to FAT32. Because HDT was not able to change the driver.

SanDisk Ultra II has speed of 15 MB/s. The speed is more than enough cause SCSI-2 bus in Q650 is only 10MB/s. That's why people who been able to use CF cards in their macs do not see any speed increase. The bootleneck is the SCSI-2 bus speed.

I also installed Artmix's CF2SCSI 2.5" adapter in my PB 550C but I'll report that in the PB section

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[Bunsen]

It's great to hear about all the success with Flash drives in this thread. It would rock my little world if you guys would be so kind as to add your results - both successful and otherwise - to the Flash Drive Test Results wiki chart.

 

[register]

Formatting the CF card was troublesome. (...)

My experience is that flash memory cards work very well in vintage machines when formatted using a recent version of Apple's Disk Utility. Up to the latest Tiger version it provides an option to format drives in the "Mac OS Standard" format (HFS). If you have acess to recent Mac hardware, try to work around troublesome outdated drivers by using Disk Utility. This will make sure to leave the memory usable in recent computers, as well. It also might be most useful if you want to transfer files from one machine to another.
The drive specific data used for speed optimisation in disk formatter software provides information about physical features of the drive, like the number of platters, number of cylinders per platter, specifics of the head actuating mechanism, probably read/write caching methods. This may affect access times when used in a device with moving [edit: replace "using"] parts, i.e. an actual harddisk drive. I do not believe it will make that much of a difference when using solid state storage devices. Fragmentation of data also should be no speed throttle any more with flash memory. If someone has a better knowledge of this subject, please fill in some explanatory words

 

[JDW]

SE/30, thank you for the insights on how to format the cards. I was curious on that point.

As to your comments on speed, you mention that the card is "more than enough" for the Mac you used it on, and then you also cite a theoretical speed of the Extreme II card. However, this is not the same as a detailed comparison between an Extreme-series flash card in a Mac and a fast SCSI (7200rpm & 10krpm) spinning platter hard drive in that same Macintosh.

Theoretical card speeds and Mac SCSI bus interface discussions are one thing, but real world direct comparisons are another. For what will "satisfy" one Mac user in terms of speed may not satisfy another. This is especially true when some of us are using some very fast SCSI disks in our old Macs. And if we then buy another hard drive technology, in hopes of obtaining yet higher performance, only to find that new expensive technology is actually slower in many respects, then the disappointment sets in. I know full well that some of you out there are willing to sacrifice some speed for silence and heat elimination. But I personally am not. As the old Queen song goes: "I want it all... and I want it now." :b&w:

 

[ReactiveMicro.com]

Hello Guys.

Experiment with a CF card that you can afford to throw away. Multiple reformats will reduce its life considerably.

Not to beleaguer a point, but if you mean a Low Level format, then I can kind of see your point. A High Level format would only write some markers and structure info though. Either way it's not really going to reduce the cards' life span by that much unless Macs do something that I'm unaware of when formatting a volume? Low Level would be the worst thing I can think of and that only writes to each sector once and then reads to verify it. Or that's how I understand it at least. Anyone else have some addition/correction?

I defined "hardware" as "the hardware that is used to interface a given flash memory to the SCSI bus of the old Mac." I was NOT talking about Mac hardware. So my question here has nothing to do with the speed limitations of the Mac's SCSI bus.Now have a look at the Extreme IV card. Read and Write speeds of 45MB/second?!?!?

Well the CF Card may be able to hit a certain speed, but I don't believe an SE/30 could keep up. I don't know any technical info on the SE/30, but if it has SCSI-2 then the max it could be is something like 10MB/s according to Wiki. So even if the CF Card hits 45MB/s and the SCSI PCMCIA Drive has no overhead then the bottleneck would be at the SCSI Buss of the Mac and limited to 10MB/s at the most. Probably more like 6-8MB/s with system overhead - max. So if anything most all CF Cards would be just as fast, if not just slightly faster, then any SCSI HDD in the SE/30. Newer Macs it may matter in although I had read somewhere that they had switched from SCSI years ago.

Now I don't know what Mac you would want to use the SCSI PCMCIA Drive in, but chances are it's going to be able to keep up with all but the more modern Macs with (if they even had) SCSI-3. Then of course the major benefit is ability to use almost any storage medium with the right Adapter in the PCMCIA Drive.

I can confirm that "Microtech PCD 47B" and SanDisk Ultra II 4GB CompactFlash card is working nicely in Q650. I couldn't try it in my SE/30's cause both of them require a recap. It should work in SE/30 as well.

I would also assume it would be just fine in the SE/30. Do you know what speed/type SCSI is in the Q650? I took a quick search and couldn't find any info on that one.

The drive specific data used for speed optimisation in disk formatter software provides information about physical features of the drive, like the number of platters, number of cylinders per platter, specifics of the head actuating mechanism, probably read/write caching methods. This may affect access times when used in a device with using parts, i.e. an actual harddisk drive. I do not believe it will make that much of a difference when using solid state storage devices. Fragmentation of data also should be no speed throttle any more with flash memory. If someone has a better knowledge of this subject, please fill in some explanatory words

Yes, you are correct about fragmentation not being an issue with Flash. Since Flash is a form of RAM/ROM (depending on how you want to look at it), there's only addresses and I/Os for data - not tracks and sectors which require heads to find and read them. In this case the Flash device would have a MicroContoller of some sort that would translate track/sector requests to memory addresses, among other things. So it's much like comparing ROM to Floppy. And when's the last time you defragged a ROM? ;-)

You mention that the card is "more than enough" for the Mac you used it on, and then you also cite a theoretical speed of the Extreme II card. However, this is not the same as a detailed comparison between an Extreme-series flash card in a Mac and a fast SCSI (7200rpm & 10krpm) spinning platter hard drive in that same Macintosh.Theoretical card speeds and Mac SCSI bus interface discussions are one thing, but real world direct comparisons are another.

Very true. The only 'real' test would be a piece of software, like Norton's Disk Doctor or SpinRite, that would be able to determine read/write/track speeds. Track however would all be the same for Flash - next to nothing. Read and Write would mainly depend on how efficient the SCSI to PCMCIA conversion was in the SCSI PCMCIA Drive and how large the test file was. I really can't see to many different ways to convert SCSI to PCMCIA to Flash so I would assume all SCSI Flash Drives would have about the same times using the same test medium - i.e. - CF, SD, etc. The only advantage a SCSI HDD would have is the fact that there wouldn't be any delay due to protocol conversion, although this probably would be negated due to the almost instant access times of Flash.

Without actual testing we're just speculating of course, but I really can't see a native SCSI device being any quicker then the SCSI PCMCIA Drive UNLESS you were to purchase a SCSI Flash HDD which are just now being sold. Even then, with the older Macs I don't see any major gain in the access times even though the SCSI Flash HDD would be in the order of 8-10 times more expensive then any SCSI PCMCIA Drive available to us today.

PS - I purchased an entire 256MB setup for about $125 delivered. Something like 4GB would have only been about $40 more, but I would never have used it on my Apple II.

 

[JDW]

Hello Guys....I don't believe an SE/30 could keep up.

This is a theoretical assumption that parallels what Manabu Sakai tried to tell me in order to promote his flash drive solution. But in the end, even Manabu said that I would be "disappointed with performance relative to a stock hard drive." Certainly, that makes no logical or theoretical sense at all to me, as a modern 10krpm hard drive should easily overload the SE/30's 1.5MB/sec SCSI-I bus. But the fact is that Manabu was illustrating a very important point: regardless of the theory, a 7200rpm or 10k rpm fast spinning platter drive "feels fast" when you use it. And then when you drop a flash drive in, that flash drive "feels slower in comparison." None of the theory holds water at that point. I matters little of the "theory is right or wrong on the SE/30." Speed is all that matters here (for both reads and writes).

The only 'real' test would be a piece of software, like Norton's Disk Doctor or SpinRite, that would be able to determine read/write/track speeds.

You are considering scientific testing here, of course. And there is nothing wrong with that. But I prefer real world testing that centers on "normal use." How fast does the Mac cold boot? How fast can I load Photoshop (and yes, I can do that even on an SE/30). How fast can I write big files and small files to the drive. How fast can I copy off those same files (in the Finder)? What is the performance like for CD-ROM games or educational software where I have copied the entire contents of the CD to disk and launched it from disk?

These are real world tests and they will show us quite clearly which drive is faster in terms of reading and writing.

 

[istar1018]

I just wanted to chime in and say I've had nothing but success with the Acard adaptors. I've been using a few of them with some generic cheapo IDE-CF adaptors from Hong Kong with great success. My 8500 has been running 8.6 off of a 4gb card and I've got a Color Classic happily running 7.5.5 off of a 1gb card. For me, the trick was to steer clear of Apple's Drive Setup / Disk Utility. I have a version of Hard Disk Toolkit PE that came on some Power Computing CD that works just fine. Once I used that to put drivers on and initialize the CF cards, things went quite smoothly.

Subsequently, I've swapped between any number of on and off brand CF cards and have yet to find one that doesn't work. Some of them are slower than others, but they all work. The 8500 has been running nonstop doing non disk intensive tasks for more than a year, and the lifecycle hasn't been an issue yet - its card works just fine without any read / write errors.

 

[johnklos]

I am a HUGE fan of Acard SCSI-IDE adapters. They have a number of different types - in my SE/30, I'm using the 50 pin kind which mounts underneath a 3.5" 750 gig IDE drive since the SE/30 can take full-height 3.5" drives.

In one of my Quadra 605s, I use a 50 pin to IDE which is in the space of the floppy drive with cables run across. In another Quadra 605 built into a 1U case, I use a 68 pin to IDE which mounts on the back of the drive.

In my SGI Indy, which can only fit a standard 3.5" 50 pin drive with no space for something behind the drive, I am using a neat enclosure / adapter which takes a SATA 2.5" hard drive and fits perfectly. If I were doing another Quadra 605, I'd probably use this since it obviously takes a lot less power than a typical 3.5" drive.

With regards to CompactFlash to IDE adapters, be careful - most, unless they specifically state otherwise, WON'T work with cards larger than 2 gigs. I have three different kinds of adapters, and they all work with any card I can find which is 2 gigs or less, but none will work with 4 gig or larger of any kind.

They come in handy for things like booting NetBSD where the primary drives are on an add-in card which doesn't have direct boot support. One of my Amigas boots off of an 8 meg card, then mounts the primary drives off of the SCSI bus since it's much faster than the IDE bus. On my PowerMac 9600 NetBSD machine, it boots NetBSD from the motherboard SCSI bus (via an Acard IDE-SCSI adapter), and the kernel's root filesystem is set to drives on an ATTO SCSI bus.

It's nice to be able to put new, modern drives in machines of any age, especially since most newer drives take less power and make less noise.

I hope this helps!

 

[JDW]

Lots of talk about adapters, but how "fast" are these solutions? (See my previous posts in this thread to understand what I mean here.)

 

[johnklos]

Speed? The speed of IDE-SCSI adapters is excellent. You're basically taking the speed advantages of modern IDE drives and adding to them the advantages of SCSI DMA (on NetBSD DMA-supporting cards, that is). Parts of disk benchmarking on an 80 MB/sec ATTO card in a 9600 show 60 MB/sec from a 500 gig drive, and in excess of 70 MB/sec from a hardware mirroring SATA enclosure with two 1 terabyte drives and an Acard SATA-SCSI adapter.

The speed of CompactFlash to IDE adapters is pretty modest in my opinion. On a fast machine (not an '030), a typical newer CF card will do between 5 and 10 megabytes a second. I don't use them for much more than booting, but I suppose if I wanted to add a drive with no moving parts to an older machine with a modest SCSI bus, that'd be one way to go.

 

[JDW]

I myself am mainly considering use in a 030 compact Mac (as described in my previous posts). And as I mentioned previously, I am eager to see some "real world" speed comparisons on a compact Mac, with a flash solution pitted against a fast 7200rpm (or even 10krpm) SCSI drive.

 

[johnklos]

Well, I can run a comparison of a 2 gig card against a fast SCSI drive. I have a feeling, though, that since both the card and the drive will be significantly faster than the SCSI bus, there won't be much to report!

I'll post something tomorrow.

 

[istar1018]

Subjectively, the CF cards are slow for disk access. I especially notice this in the 8500. Two things seem to happen - first, the CF cards exhibit a bursting phenomenon, where in an extended write operation, the CF card will need a few seconds to pause, presumably finish writing what it has been sent, and later resume receiving new data. Second, actual file copying takes quite a while longer, I'd say on the order of 1.5x to 2x, but I don't have a quasi-fast 50 pin drive against which to accurately benchmark. I know that the Color Classic runs about as fast as it did when it had some olde Apple romed 40mb clunker in it, but that's setting the bar pretty low. But I've noticed a significant increase in booting time on the 8500.

 

[Dzave]

With regards to CompactFlash to IDE adapters, be careful - most, unless they specifically state otherwise, WON'T work with cards larger than 2 gigs. I have three different kinds of adapters, and they all work with any card I can find which is 2 gigs or less, but none will work with 4 gig or larger of any kind.

So johnklos, to confirm this you have tried using the Acard 7720u? and that will not support any compact flash card over 2GB in your Q605? I had planned to do something similar using a fast 300X 16 or 32GB compact flash card. I want it to be fast so I can take this out and put it on a modern machine and copy files to and from at full speed.

I'm not really worried about the lifespan of the card as long as it is SLC and not MLC based like the cheaper ones are. Hopefully when cheaper it would be nice to use one of the new intel SSD where the random write speed is no longer a problem like on current models avg 5-8MB/sec. But with the slow SCSI1 we shouldn't have to worry too much about that. It would be nice to have a detailed test that compares compact flash, SSD, and SCSI HD performance.

 

[johnklos]

Yes, I can confirm that I've used CompactFlash to IDE adapters with the Acard 7720u. However, the 2 gig limit was a limit caused by my CompactFlash to IDE adapter, not the Acard. I have various Acards which work with IDE devices up to 1.5 terabytes (via a 1.5 TB SATA drive and a SATA to IDE adapter).

My warning was just that you should make sure you get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter which explicitly says that it supports cards larger than 2 gigs, else you MIGHT get an adapter which is limited.

I have not yet been able to format a drive so that it boots my SE/30 properly. It gives me the black unhappy Mac screen almost immediately. Booting from the Apple Network Access floppy lets me mount network volumes and run programs, so I know the hardware is good. I just need to find a proper disk formatter. Any suggestions, anyone?

 

[Dzave]

Here is the IDE to compact flash adapter that I planned on using the startech CF2X2IDE25 which would allow 2 compact flash drives on a single board and still use the the acard 7720U.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A2125370&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=30322&lid=680414

And then add in SoftRaid 2.x, and see if this would work for a mirror, or if speed would be increased at all in a raid 0, I'm guessing it wouldn't make a difference since its already flash but a mirror would be interesting.

 

[Bunsen]

It's highly unlikely you will see two drives at all using that setup. I've read elsewhere that the dual head CF adapters show up as a single drive on Macs. And that's Macs with native IDE - the Acard 7220 will definitely only convert a single drive. I don't know whether that means you'll get a single volume the size of both cards, or only one card's worth.

I just need to find a proper disk formatter. Any suggestions, anyone?

Lido

 

[istar1018]

Yeah, the slave card / drive typically doesn't show up at all, at least in my experience (seems to depend on the IDE-CF adaptor's mood). I have one adaptor that will consistently show the card attached as slave, but nothing I do will make it boot from it (startup disk, blessing / reblessing system folder, different system versions, different cards, etc.). That said, I've found that the build quality on the two card adaptors seems to be a little bit higher than the single card adaptors - I bought a pack of three single card adaptors and had components actually fall off the board on one of them! Good luck!

 

[Dzave]

Thanks for the feedback guys, that was not as encouraging as I had hoped for but its nice to know before I fork over the cash for this setup.