That indeed looks like a cf to ide adapter to me

yep, looks like PCMCIA to me, probably for PCMCIA flash cards?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-03, 16:18:

That indeed looks like a cf to ide adapter to me

CF only has 50pins and is less wide.

this is full 68pins PCMCIA

you could probably just make it a CF adapter by using a CF-PCMCIA adapter though ^^

Neat. I've never seen a pcmcia to ide adapter. Just pcmcia pci or Isa cards

That's a passive adapter, but PCMCIA is not ATA. This can't work, unless it's for special cards that may use the PCMCIA connector, but aren't PCMCIA cards.

I think that in the plastic bag sticker there was written CF/IDE adapter, can you imagine... It's indeed a passive adapter no active components beside the leds are on the pcb. But does a pcmcia to "memory" existed? I remember having a PCMCIA to PCI adapter that had sense, but this one I cannot understand the point of passing through the IDE connection...

Have you tried inserting a cf card into it?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-03, 16:43:

Have you tried inserting a cf card into it?

I've no CF cards since decades.. but I'd buy one for a retro machine disk alternative even if I think to remember CF cards to be much shorter. I had it on a Canon compact camera and I remember they were not that big. Between the two black guides there're 55 millimeters of space..
I wonder what config would have needed a PCMCIA to IDE connection... and without any converter just direct connection.

EDIT: I see on ebay there're many PCMCIA to CF adapters... then I might add a CF to SD adapter, SD to MicroSD adapter etc ... 😁

386SX wrote on 2020-06-03, 16:41:

I think that in the plastic bag sticker there was written CF/IDE adapter, can you imagine... It's indeed a passive adapter no active components beside the leds are on the pcb. But does a pcmcia to "memory" existed? I remember having a PCMCIA to PCI adapter that had sense, but this one I cannot understand the point of passing through the IDE connection...

yes, pcmcia flash was a format just like CF, just google, there's plenty of them.

derSammler wrote on 2020-06-03, 16:35:

That's a passive adapter, but PCMCIA is not ATA. This can't work, unless it's for special cards that may use the PCMCIA connector, but aren't PCMCIA cards.

yes it is PCMCIA, in fact that was one of it's original purposes, obviously this passive adapter doesn't support anything but ATA devices though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card#History

SanDisk (operating at the time as "SunDisk") launched its PCMCIA card in October 1992. The company was the first to introduce a writeable Flash RAM card for the HP 95LX (the first MS-DOS pocket computer). These cards conformed to a supplemental PCMCIA-ATA standard that allowed them to appear as more conventional IDE hard drives to the 95LX or a PC. This had the advantage of raising the upper limit on capacity to the full 32M available under DOS 3.22 on the 95LX.[3]