magestic wrote on 2023-12-15, 04:02:

Getting the right CF Card is key i come to learn, I've had better luck with "SATA To PATA IDE Hard Drive Adapter Converter 2.5/3.5 HDD Parallel to Serial ATA" and Disk on Modules "DOM"

Out of the different solid state storage devices on the market, Compact Flash has the broadest family tree. PATA CFs were in active development from 1992 through about 2012, during the most turbulent time of the ATA command set development . There's a big difference between the 30 year old CFs and 10 year old CFs, just like there's a big difference in a 30 year old HD vs a 10 year old HD. In more recent times many Compact flash devices were often focused on video storage which prioritized sustained throughput over random access, and that wasn't always great for desktop computing performance and PCs couldn't use many of the new performance features ( If anyone finds a PC that supports UDMA-7, let me know) To top it off, it doesn't seem like a lot of the newer camera focused firmware was thoroughly tested on retro hardware. As CF's started to move into obsolescence this decade, it seems like some vendors just started to throw more "whatever" into the devices. Either that or it was Chinese knockoffs stealing brand names. Doesn't matter the cause. The effect is the same. You try to buy the same product that worked before and it turns out you only bought the same logo. It's a shame, because I felt that for retro computing, the CF form factor provided a compelling blend of physical size, portability, durability, and storage capacity. However, CF's are still really cheap and the adapters are cheap, so for the price of a around of drinks for your mates, you can buy a couple different CFs and hopefully find one that works well for you. Just about all CF's are fast enough for computers built before 1999, but pre 2005 CF's & video storage focused CF's can be less desirable as the primary storage in faster systems. I've had good luck with 2GB CF devices.

I've looked at a about a half dozen DOMs and they seem to closely resemble "industrial" compact flash devices with firmware from the 2008-2010 period, which was a good time period for fast, compatible PATA devices. "Industrial" here means firmware that its optimized for random file access and doesn't report itself as removable media. The one exception was Hyperdisk, where I've seen firmware versions 20140803 & 20150807 and both reported that they conformed to ATA-9, which I've never seen documented. Anyway, while there seems like less firmware variation in the DOM market, there's still some with all the potential edge case issues. They often have side clips that want to latch firmly to the controller header, which might require some additional attention but they do make for a very clean looking build if media portability isn't something you need. My experience here is that DOM's >= 8GB usually have 2 flash chips, which means higher throughput (60MB/s max) , while lower capacity DOM's only have a single flash chip (30MB/s max) but that only matters if you do some tricks to get things things to go faster than UDMA-2, which requires funky cabling that junks up your build or you have to crack them open and short pin 34. It's fun to do once. After that it's a chore and a risk.

Solid state SATA is also usually a safe play and has the best performance. Serial ATA's command set was mature by the time it came about and it was almost always included desktop computing needs as part of it's target audience. You rarely get ATA firmware compatibility issues, the speed is top notch, and those 16GB mSata ( or M2 ) modules are pretty cheap & available as the first few generations of Chromebooks head into e-waste. But you need to add a mSata (or M2 ) to PATA 44 adapter, and then a Pata 44 to Pata 40 adapter, which starts to add some overhead to the project and by the time you add in the adapters, the connections start to get kind of flimsy unless you use a 3d printer to make a bracket to hold it all together. Here's what I made: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6377242 Still a work in progress. The sata-Pata bridges have the Jmicro ship, which is pretty compatible ( Promise 20630 controllers didn't like the way it spoke DMA2, not sure if it was the bridge or the sata) . I finally tracked down a Marvell Sata bridge. It was more expensive and didn't completely cure the compatibility issues I had. Finally, the portability of sata devices to contemporary computers is better than a DOM, but it isn't nearly as convenient as CF or an SD.

SD's in a Sinitechi bridge cost a little more than a CF adapter, but the SD's are really cheap and the Sinitechi device provides a consistent ATA firmware, which means that from an ATA stand point, everything is more predictable, in as much as putting contemporary storage in a retro build can be predictable. I've only seen two versions of the Sinitechi firmware and the both support ATA-7, LBA-48, UDMA-6, & DMA2. You get the picture. All the stuff you might want. Outside of some early PCI ATA-3/4 controllers, I've not had a lot of compatibility problems. I just wish the SD devices themselves weren't so small that you could label them and that they weren't so small that they get lost on my workbench. They do have SD-CF bridges, but the bridges that fit into type I CF slots seem to need 3.3v power, which requires the more expensive CF-PATA adapters, and the price point for those devices isn't where I want to buy one of them for each SD I own.

Anyway, as a final note that affects all of these devices, there are old BIOS's that gets really unhappy when very large devices try to report their capacity, so sometimes the size of the storage affects the compatible when you are dealing with < 1995 builds.

Edit: Typos! And more Typoes! I mean typos@

douglar wrote on 2023-12-15, 14:15:

for the price of a around of drinks for your mates, you can buy a couple different CFs and hopefully find one that works well for you

In this instance I don't find it fair to penalize his mates for the benefit of finding the right CF. I would recommend to do both, even if it requires a slightly bigger investment.