Card reader for dedicated Mame?

[Wade]

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CF-BOOTER-N&cat=CAM

I have a Mame cocktail with a minimal setup, about 12 games.  It has a small hard drive in it.

I saw this for $30 was was thinking I could put an old 8 or 16M smartmedia card to use, and run the cocktail diskless.  For doing updates or adding games, I could just pull the card out and stick it in my desktop machine.  The description says the card will be bootable just like a hard drive.

Has anyone used one of these?  I think I am going to buy one just to see how it works.  If it doesn't work for this purpose, I will use it on my desktop machine, which really needs it's own card reader anyway, instead of the USB reader I keep lugging around.

Opinions?

Wade

[Wade]

Just saw that it can only boot on the CF card it appears.  Still, smaller CF cards can be picked up for $10 or so.

Wade

[dag2000]

WORKING LINK

[dabone]

I had my vertical cab running on a cf to ide adapter. It worked fine for about a week then it lost all the info on the card.
It didn't damage the card, but I had to redo everything.

Not sure what caused it, but I'd be leary of installing one for reliablilty reasons.


Later,
dabone

[pointdablame]

Not sure what could have caused you to lose all your data, but depending on your setup, you could get everything up and running and simply drop a back up of the CF card onto a CD.  If the card ever loses the data, it'll only take a minute or two to get up and running, no?

[Wade]

That's what I was thinking, I have a backup of my cocktail already for that exact reason (old 500 mb hard drive could die!)

But I would still be interested in hearing from others about the reliability of CF cards.  Also, how fast does the system and games start up when running on one of these cards?

Thanks,
Wade

[Hoagie_one]

CF cards are supposed to be very fast boots.

I saw just now on ebay that they have an ide adapter that can hold two CF cards.  one master, one slave.

i might use it on my mini-itx project im working on.

[Samstag]

Something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=167&item=5136604165&rd=1
is what you probably want.  You can find them cheaper (closer to $10) if you shop around.  I think I got mine for $8 shipped from someone on Ebay.  I haven't used it yet since I haven't decided on a size yet.

As for speed and reliability, we're using some CF-only linux machines at work and have had them corrupt on us twice on the same machine (4 machines running 24/7 with pretty heavy use).  As for speed, a cheap CF is only going to run at a couple of megabytes per second.  It's probably plenty fast for a minimal mame setup.  The only speed issues we have are slowdowns due to all the read/writes of virtual memory.  If you use windows or linux, turn the virtual/swap drives off.

[wj2k3]

You could also use a thumb drive.   No need for a reader since most computers have a usb port.  Even better if you have USB 2.0.   If not,  a pci card can be installed but there goes the benefit of not needing to purchase a reader...

I have seen 1GB thumb drives for $41 after $20 rebate.  

I just format my thumb drive as a bootbale drive, but unfortunately the Dell's here at work don't allow booting from USB.  I understand though, that alot of the non-Dell bio's allow it so it will depend on your hardware.


 

[Wade]

Definitely don't want to use USB because 1) I don't think this PC has a USB port 2) if it has a USB port it likely isn't bootable and 3) I use DOS, I think using USB in DOS is not likely to be a simple task.

But I'd try it if it'd work.

Wade

[wj2k3]

Are you sure the Compact Flash Card Booter that you linked to will work in DOS?  

It states:
# Windows 98SE/ME/2000XP compatible
# Linux compatible
# Mac OS compatible

Could use a stripped down version of 98 though.

[Wade]

No, I'm definitely not sure.  I'd kinda like to be, though.

Since it is bootable, I don't see how it could require Windows to work.  I mean, Windows would have to boot first right?  Or is this some kind of misnomer that gets tossed around by peripheral companies?

Like I said, I could really use it on my desktop anyway, so I am probably going to buy one and find out.

Wade

Are you sure the Compact Flash Card Booter that you linked to will work in DOS?  

It states:
# Windows 98SE/ME/2000XP compatible
# Linux compatible
# Mac OS compatible

Could use a stripped down version of 98 though.

[Samstag]

The CF adaptor I linked to will work under any OS because it appears to be an IDE device to the PC.  That reminds me that we've been using tiny 8 meg CF/IDE drives on 6 other machines at work that have been operational for several years without any issues.  They all run vxworks OS.

Any USB reader (even a CF USB reader) is going to need USB support from the OS and motherboard.  An IDE adaptor will work anywhere you can use an IDE hard drive.

[wj2k3]

Viking 1GB CompactFlash Card $50
[$75 + $ 5 handling (but free shipping!! ) - $30 rebate]

[Wade]

Thanks for the info...

That's what I had interpreted from the product info, but obviously I couldn't be absolutely sure until I tried it (or talked to someone using the same device).

Wade

The CF adaptor I linked to will work under any OS because it appears to be an IDE device to the PC.  That reminds me that we've been using tiny 8 meg CF/IDE drives on 6 other machines at work that have been operational for several years without any issues.  They all run vxworks OS.

Any USB reader (even a CF USB reader) is going to need USB support from the OS and motherboard.  An IDE adaptor will work anywhere you can use an IDE hard drive.

[CenturionFive]

I had my vertical cab running on a cf to ide adapter. It worked fine for about a week then it lost all the info on the card.
It didn't damage the card, but I had to redo everything.

Not sure what caused it, but I'd be leary of installing one for reliablilty reasons.

The way the IDE bus reads and writes to a drive is vastly different from the way that  most flash drives a read from and written to.  There is a lot more and faster acivity on an IDE bus than what many CF cards were designed for.  Many of the newer CF cards will state that they are directly IDE accessible and they are OK but many older ones will lose data or even segments of memory when used in an IDE converter.

Cen5