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Card reader for dedicated Mame?
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