Main > Main Forum

I would like to use a compact flash as a hard drive in a bartop cabinet, but...

Pages: << < (4/7) > >>

jukingeo:


--- Quote from: milkit on June 19, 2011, 12:31:00 pm ---i could be wrong.. but lots of games will run like crap on a slow cf card.. hyperspin probably wouldn run right either.. chd games no chance

--- End quote ---

Well, my take on it that I am mostly into 80's and early 90's arcade games.  Most of these games loaded rom information into ram and I believe with MAME that wouldn't be any different.  However, on newer games that used a HDD and would need to 'load' into ram, then yes, you would have a point there.   I am right now in preliminary testing to see if this can be done.   If I am successful, I always could buy a much more expensive, albeit faster flash card.  Right now I don't want to end up blowing an expensive card due to a mistake I made in setting it up.

Now I don't know what you mean by chd games, but I know that I wouldn't get far with Hyperspin on this type of setup.  Then again, I don't need to go crazy on a bartop setup and Mala would be fine for that.   When the day comes that I build a full size cabinet, then I would stick with a standard hard drive, a full installation of Windows XP professional and THEN I will use Hyperspin as the front end.    Right now space is very limited under my current constrained living conditions...those conditions will exist for quite a while and as such right now I am interested in building small bartop style cabinets.

Thank you,

Geo

newmanfamilyvlogs:

Is the hassle of dealing with a CF vs a 2.5" HDD+sata->ide adaptor purely a size/space issue?

leapinlew:


--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 19, 2011, 07:41:48 pm ---Is the hassle of dealing with a CF vs a 2.5" HDD+sata->ide adaptor purely a size/space issue?

--- End quote ---

I'm guessing it's the challenge because between Ghost (and other image software) and a SATA or IDE to USB adapter there is hardly no advantage to going with CF. Either way, if you're going to clone a system, you'll need to do a bit level copy and thats going to take some time. If CF is slower than a 2.5" SATA drive, than any time savings will be lost.

Why not us SD cards, or USB thumb drives?




newmanfamilyvlogs:

I must have missed the part where needing the access the disk via usb was a concern. But I can't imagine any scenario where a modern 2.5" drive would be slower than a CF. All of the sata drives i've used a sata->ide adaptor on have maxed out the bandwidth of the ata133 bus i've hooked them too.

jukingeo:


--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 19, 2011, 07:41:48 pm ---Is the hassle of dealing with a CF vs a 2.5" HDD+sata->ide adaptor purely a size/space issue?
--- End quote ---

Nope, the adapter is only slightly smaller than a 2.5 hdd.  It is an inexpensive ssd thing with an easy way to make changes.


--- Quote from: leapinlew on June 19, 2011, 08:50:05 pm ---Why not us SD cards, or USB thumb drives?
--- End quote ---

It's the same thing...a flash drive, right?  I was under the impression that going the USB route would even be slower than a Compact Flash via an IDE/Sata adapter.


--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on June 19, 2011, 09:00:29 pm ---I must have missed the part where needing the access the disk via usb was a concern. But I can't imagine any scenario where a modern 2.5" drive would be slower than a CF. All of the sata drives i've used a sata->ide adaptor on have maxed out the bandwidth of the ata133 bus i've hooked them too.

--- End quote ---

Well, the IDE adapter cost me about $10 and the Transcend Card cost $27.   The cheapest SSD in about the same capacity and size was $132.   The cheapest 2.5 HDD I could find was a Western Digital 80gig drive for about $55.  I don't trust Western Digital so going with Seagate would be looking at $79 for a 1TB drive.

Reasons for going CF:

A) This project was aimed at a solid state hard drive project, but an actual ssd is prohibitively expensive.
B) Out of the various pen drives, SD cards, etc, Compact Flash via an IDE or SATA adapter seemed to be the fastest way to go.
C) The size / cost is obvious.  I just don't need such a damn huge 80gig+ HDD for most of my applications.  Most of projects would use less than 3 or 4 gig.  The jukebox project might require a bit more, but the 16gig card will cover that.
D) I already have everything needed to copy Compact Flash cards, as an old digital cameras I have uses them.

Bottom line, CF seems like a logical choice to experiment with.   If I had extra money to throw away, then I would have gone with an actual SSD.   But even then, I believe I still would have had to take some precautions on excessive writes (however, when it comes to actual SSD drives, I am not sure if they have the same limitations as flash memory).

Ok, that all being said...getting back on track.

Today I began further testing of my setup with the EWF turned on.  This time I put DWJukebox under the gun.

When I first set up DWJukebox, I had the EWF off due to the fact I was making changes to the program that needed to be saved.   During these tests, I had noticed that sometimes page turning animation caused a small skip in the audio output.  I figured this was expected since I only had 256meg of ram on board.  I did notice that the HDD light came on during the skip.

Now here is the kicker.  After I set it all up and turned the EWF back on the skipping on the page turning miraculously stopped.  The HDD light doesn't come on at all during song play...only when a new song is loaded into memory.

Now this finding is like WOW!  I NEVER thought I could pull this off with DWJukebox on a machine with as little memory as 256meg.

I would have to say that EWF is definitely the biggest thing I am going to take with me when this project is done.  I am going to even use it for regular HDD projects as well.

Now that I know this can be done with Windows XP...I am curious what I can do with Linux :).

Geo

Pages: << < (4/7) > >>

Go to full version