VOGONS


First post, by ujav

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When I first heard about CF to IDE adapters, I thought it's 100% compatible with every card, since Compact Flash is basically compact IDE, also every card should(?) work with voltages from 3.3 to 5V.
Only complicated part is an old hardware, BIOS limits etc, but any card itself should work?

So, I bought simple adapter (black one), found old 32mb card for testing and it working just fine. But then I tried 4Gb 233x card, and it's not recognized, no matter what I do. 3.3V jumper just hangs the system during boot, slave/master not doing anything. I tried couple of computers, old and new one, the newest what I have with IDE connector, with the same outcome. 4Gb always "no drive detected", 32mb always works.

Another strange thing, I tested them in a 17in1 usb card-reader, and I have vice versa. 4Gb working there, but 32mb not, like no media inserted.
So, just, what is going on here?

Reply 1 of 10, by dkarguth

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Some CF cards are not directly compatible with IDE, if I am remembering correctly. I believe there is a version of the standard that does not work with those adapters. Also, some HDD controllers don't like to play nice with the CF cards because they sometimes have strange configurations that a physical hard disk wouldn't have.

"And remember, this fix is only temporary, unless it works." -Red Green

Reply 2 of 10, by keenmaster486

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What computer are you trying this with? It matters how old the BIOS is - not for CF compatibility, but because your drive size is so large.

There was a 504 MB size limitation at some point. There were others as well. You could get around it with a drive overlay.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 3 of 10, by doaks80

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I use a SD card in a standard CF/SD adapter inside a CF/IDE adapter and it's extremely fast, and cheaper than a bunch of real CF cards. Better than a SD/IDE adapter as none of them plug directly into the ide port without a cable. Also SD/CF adapters are very mature amd reliable devices from the camera industry.

k6-3+ 400 / s3 virge DX+voodoo1 / awe32(32mb)
via c3 866 / s3 savage4+voodoo2 sli / audigy1+awe64(8mb)
athlon xp 3200+ / voodoo5 5500 / diamond mx300
pentium4 3400 / geforce fx5950U / audigy2 ZS
core2duo E8500 / radeon HD5850 / x-fi titanium

Reply 4 of 10, by GigAHerZ

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So far i've been using the cheapest CF cards one can get from china, sizes 4GB-8GB, and they have worked great.

Maybe some more advanced CF cards drop the basic IDE support, that old PC's require...

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

Reply 5 of 10, by amadeus777999

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I only bought Transcend ones from 0.5 to 8GB where latter always caused trouble - all others work fine.
I also rather buy the Industrial versions which are pricey but may be worth it.

Better buy used ones and try different brands.

Reply 6 of 10, by BlackLinus24

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I would also go for industrial grade CF cards. The advantages of industrial CF cards is that they come with more reliable single level cells (SLC). If you install any Win9X or WinXP on them it might be worthwhile getting industrial CF cards as their longevity is longer (they can endure more read-write cycles. Also, industrial CF cards are already pre-set in "Fixed Mode" - a requirement by some old OS to be installed upon.

Reply 7 of 10, by red_avatar

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ujav wrote:
When I first heard about CF to IDE adapters, I thought it's 100% compatible with every card, since Compact Flash is basically co […]
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When I first heard about CF to IDE adapters, I thought it's 100% compatible with every card, since Compact Flash is basically compact IDE, also every card should(?) work with voltages from 3.3 to 5V.
Only complicated part is an old hardware, BIOS limits etc, but any card itself should work?

So, I bought simple adapter (black one), found old 32mb card for testing and it working just fine. But then I tried 4Gb 233x card, and it's not recognized, no matter what I do. 3.3V jumper just hangs the system during boot, slave/master not doing anything. I tried couple of computers, old and new one, the newest what I have with IDE connector, with the same outcome. 4Gb always "no drive detected", 32mb always works.

Another strange thing, I tested them in a 17in1 usb card-reader, and I have vice versa. 4Gb working there, but 32mb not, like no media inserted.
So, just, what is going on here?

I'm testing these adapters myself at the moment - both CF and SD. There are quite some variations despite the boards looking similar - the main difference I noticed, is the type of cards these devices will accept so make sure you read the fine print. I ordered the following so far:

CF to IDE
TB23.tBaFXXXXboXXXXXXXXXXXX_!!12402389.jpg
- Voltage selection of 3.3V or 5V and slave/master selection
- compatible with CF type 1, 2 and Micro Drive
- the bracket lets you mount it so that the card is accessible at all times. I plan to use it for swapping out different OS versions on my IBM Aptiva 486SX or for easily adding files.

I only tested up to 2GB so far (I saw little use in going over that due to BIOS limitations - for Win9X machines CF is too slow anyway). It works great - highly recommended. IBM Aptiva 486 and Pentium 233 and 600 all detect and support it completely without any BIOS fiddling required.

Watch out: there's a LOT of variations on this system and some don't support all cards from what I read.

SD to IDE
HTB19efCyY1YBuNjSszeq6yblFXaO.jpg

I didn't read the small print (see my advice above :p ) and found out too late that it only supports up to 4GB. It gets worse: this thing does NOT get detected by older PCs. The earliest PC to detect it, is my Pentium III 600. My Pentium 233 will "detect" it but refuses to boot from it or even read it. My 486SX won't even pretend it's connected let alone boot off it. With CF having native IDE support, it's not surprising it has lower compatibility but I still expected more of it. The 4GB limit makes it pretty useless for more recent PCs as well since that's really the absolute minimum for a Windows 98 installation to install games on. My old 8GB drive filled VERY quickly since quite a few games demand installations of 200MB+ (especially those that used CD audio since playing audio and reading data off the same disc doesn't quite work).

I ordered an SD to IDE with a higher limit of 128GB which should be perfect for my Win9X machines.

Retro game fanatic.
IBM PS1 386SX25 - 4MB
IBM Aptiva 486SX33 - 8MB - 2GB CF - SB16
IBM PC350 P233MMX - 64MB - 32GB SSD - AWE64 - Voodoo2
PIII600 - 320MB - 480GB SSD - SB Live! - GF4 Ti 4200
i5-2500k - 3GB - SB Audigy 2 - HD 4870

Reply 8 of 10, by ujav

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Ok, so a quick update, card was definitely fine, problem was the adapter.

I bought another one, with a bracket and it's working fine with any cards I have. So, lesson learned, do not use a cheapest option.

EG5EU52.jpg

Reply 9 of 10, by NamelessPlayer

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CompactFlash cards, especially microdrives of the sort you'd find in an iPod mini or Palm LifeDrive, work pretty good in my experience, albeit with some quirks.

-The adapter can sometimes make adding a slave device to the same IDE cable a pain, even though there's only one slot soldered on. There's contacts for a second slot, which could be why it's so quirky with acknowledging a second hard drive on the IDE cable.

-Attempting to run IDEfix on an Amiga with a CompactFlash device attached tends to make it hang during the install process, and even though there's a patch that's supposed to address this, it doesn't seem to work with the version I nabbed off of Aminet. Peculiar.

It's frustrating enough that I actually moved my Workbench installation over to a 6 GB IDE laptop drive to get around this particular problem with IDEfix, and thankfully, using PFS3 alone is enough to make the space beyond 4 GB usable. (If it were larger than 8 GB, though, I'd have to patch the scsi.device too, or get the newer 3.1.4 Kickstart ROMs.)

I might have better luck with one of those Disk-On-Module things...

Reply 10 of 10, by dave343

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I 2nd buying Industrial CD cards, they last longer. I changed my 486 DX33 build over to a 1GB Transcend Industrial x300 card. I have a store near me that still sells very old 90's PC equipment, so although I can get 500mb-4gb hard drives from him, all the ones I have used had whine. CF is so much easier. I'd love to get a 2GB Industrial card for a Pentium build but they are pricey.