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IDE to CF Drive adapter.
- Thread starter yestermac
- Start date
There's many of these on eBay of various shapes and sizes.
What kind of IDE connector is on your IDE->SCSI board?
Would it be better for the CF-IDE adaptor to have a right-angle connector so the IDE->SCSI and CF->IDE boards were parallel (90 + 90 = 180) or for the CF-IDE adaptor to be straight, so that the CF->IDE and IDE->SCSI boards were at a right angle to each other?
What kind of IDE connector is on your IDE->SCSI board?
Would it be better for the CF-IDE adaptor to have a right-angle connector so the IDE->SCSI and CF->IDE boards were parallel (90 + 90 = 180) or for the CF-IDE adaptor to be straight, so that the CF->IDE and IDE->SCSI boards were at a right angle to each other?
The Acard SCSI->IDE adapter is meant to mount on the back of a 3.5" IDE hard drive. The SCSI ribbon plugs into the Acard. I guess I can just engineer the Acard to sit horizontally. I was going to mount the CF drive in the floppy bay so I could remove it, but the Q605 case is so easy to open it wouldn't make much sense. I already searched eBay and googled for an adapter with a 40 pin male connector to CF connector and couldn't find any that allowed the Acard to sit vertically and the CF card to sit horizontally. They make 44 Pin adapters but then I'd have to find a 40 pin to 44 pin IDE adapter. Anyway, I'll figure something out.
Awesome. Please let us know how it does; I recommend using the ones shaped like this and then finding a way to make it lay down, just like you suggested. 'slightly longer SCSI cable' is probably the answer :-D
Please let the rest of us know how it goes; I've been advocating for this approach to solid state Macs for a couple years now, but never had both the time and money to try it out.
Please let the rest of us know how it goes; I've been advocating for this approach to solid state Macs for a couple years now, but never had both the time and money to try it out.
Thanks for the tip on dealextreme. Their prices were cheap enough I bought a bunch of different ones just in case. Free shipping too. I'll let ya'll know how it works out. I can always use the CF memory in my camera if all else fails. Are SD cards better then CF cards when used as drives? Are the CF micro Drives any good?
The CF MicroDrives are pretty good in the sense that they're tiny, fairly reliable hard drives.
They're not nearly as fast as good flash cards, but you don't have to worry about wearing them out by overwriting one particular sector too much.
I worry about the service lives of their tiny little motors, but iPod Minis that have been played constantly for years are still working so maybe I shouldn't worry about it.
Personally, I think that there's a few reasons not to worry about sector burn-out when using CF cards as storage in vintage Macs: First, the wear-leveling algos are getting better day by day. Second, the write-cycle lifetime of flash is getting better day by day. Third, vintage Macs don't pound the disk like modern OSes often do, because we usually have virtual memory turned off.
While wear-out is still a concern, I believe it to be over-inflated at this time. (note that this is just speculation because I haven't actually gotten around to rigging up flash storage in my SE/30 yet)
CF cards will probably be better than SD cards when used as drives, because all modern CF cards support 'true IDE mode' where the card behaves exactly as an IDE hard drive, complete with UltraDMA transfer modes. SD cards require fancy circuitry on the adaptor to do the same thing.
They're not nearly as fast as good flash cards, but you don't have to worry about wearing them out by overwriting one particular sector too much.
I worry about the service lives of their tiny little motors, but iPod Minis that have been played constantly for years are still working so maybe I shouldn't worry about it.
Personally, I think that there's a few reasons not to worry about sector burn-out when using CF cards as storage in vintage Macs: First, the wear-leveling algos are getting better day by day. Second, the write-cycle lifetime of flash is getting better day by day. Third, vintage Macs don't pound the disk like modern OSes often do, because we usually have virtual memory turned off.
While wear-out is still a concern, I believe it to be over-inflated at this time. (note that this is just speculation because I haven't actually gotten around to rigging up flash storage in my SE/30 yet)
CF cards will probably be better than SD cards when used as drives, because all modern CF cards support 'true IDE mode' where the card behaves exactly as an IDE hard drive, complete with UltraDMA transfer modes. SD cards require fancy circuitry on the adaptor to do the same thing.
