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Author Topic: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive  (Read 13516 times)

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Paladin

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Gauntlet Legends Compactflash Install
This is how I used a compactflash card with compactflash to IDE adapter to replace the hard drive in my Gauntlet Legends arcade cabinet.  This procedure can be used for other hard drive based games, but is not guaranteed to work.  Some arcade games have issues working with compactflash cards, mainly due to differences in ready/transfer speeds.  If you aren't able to get one brand/speed compactflash card to work, you may have luck with a different one.

Perform this procedure at your own risk! I take no responsibility for any damage you may do to your PC, arcade machine or yourself!  This info can also be found on my website here: http://home.comcast.net/~dark.paladin/gauntlet/flash.htm



I started with the only PC I have that isn't using SATA drives. I don't know if it would have made a difference combining SATA and IDE, but I decided not to risk it.

Yes, that is a PC on the right. One of my other hobbies is modifying PC cases. It would have been a lot less hassle if I had a normal case that I could have just taken the side panel off to access the internals.


Here are the compactflash to IDE adapter and 4GB compactflash card that I bought from Newegg.

One issue with using compactflash cards is that the speed may be too fast or slow for the arcade hardware to recognise. If this flash card doesn't work, a different brand/speed might.


The compactflash card simply plugs into the adapter. There are jumpers for master/slave and voltage, but the defaults were already set for what I needed, 5v and master.

Note that there are a few different types of adapters, including some that have pins at the IDE side, so you can plug them into a regular IDE cable. This model plugs right into the motherboard slot.


This shows the adapter plugged into the motherboard, with a floppy drive power connector.


Next I booted the PC, which is running Windows XP Home. A pop up notification window told me that the PC found the new hardware.

Right click on "My Computer", then select "Management" and finally "Disk Management".

In the lower right section of the display you can see that this computer has one hard drive which is partitioned into 3 drives, and the compactflash drive. The important thing to note is that the compactflash drive "F" is shown as "Disk 1". This is the drive that will recieve the Gauntlet Legends hard drive image.


I copied the chdman.exe program and the gauntleg.chd file to the hard drive. For reference, I'm using the chdman.exe from MAME V.103.

Open a DOS window and navigate to the location of the chdman.exe program, and the hard drive .chd file. In this case they're both in the root directory of my D: drive.


Enter the following command to begin the .chd file extraction to the compactflash card:
chdman -extract gauntleg.chd \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1

This will extract the gauntleg.chd file to the "Disk 1" that you found above.
To use this for a different game or hard drive number, simply replace the gauntleg.chd and/or PHYSICALDRIVE# with the image file and disk number of your system.

The last line on this screen shot shows the Extracting hunk information. The number on the left increases as the data is written to the compactflash. I didn't time it, but I estimate that it took 15 minutes to transfer all the data to the compactflash.


Extraction complete! Now just power off the PC, remove the compactflash adapter and install it into your game.


The game uses a regular sized hard drive plug to power the drive. I added a splitter cable with floppy drive style connectors to power the compactflash. I then unplugged the old hard drive ribbon cable, and plugged the compactflash adapter in, making sure that it was plugged in the right way. I've left the hard drive in the cabinet for storage.

Since this is a home use only machine, I simply plugged the compactflash adapter into the PCB. If this was to be used in an arcade I would have used some silicone or hot glue to help hold the card in the game. It seems tight enough, but in an arcade environment you never know.

When I turned it on for the first time, I got the dreaded "3 taps and you're out" message that signals a bad hard drive. I went to the next room to get my camera but by the time I got back to take the picture the game was up and running. As of the time of writing this page, I have only turned it the one time so far. I played 3 different characters, and two different worlds with no issues whatsoever. I have not yet tried to save a game status and then reload it. I'll do that at a later time.



red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2008, 04:30:37 pm »
Two questions, how do you get into the dos menu and can I put my flash drive into a card reader (on the front of the puter) to do the same thing?  Its not a problem if I have to plug it into the puter directly as I have a second computer which is easy to take apart to do this.  THANKS FOR THE WALK THROUGH!

Paladin

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2008, 05:38:13 pm »
Click on the Start button, then Run.  Enter CMD in the run box, and it'll bring up a DOS box.  To get to the drive where you have your files, enter the drive letter followed by a colon - for example D:.  Then you can change the directory your in if needed by issuing the cd command.  For example cd games/mame would move you to the mame directory inside your games directory.

I'm not an expert, but I'd say you can't format the card using a reader because the chdman program is made to format a hard drive into a non Windows format.  If you plug it into a reader, it looks to Windows like a normal small hard drive with a Windows file structure.  I don't know if it'll even show up in the disk management display since it's a removable storage device.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2008, 05:40:14 pm by Paladin »

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2008, 05:49:47 pm »
Makes sence to me.  Into the puter it goes then.  I still have to get chdman.exe then I can burn away. :applaud:

Singapura

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2008, 06:27:10 pm »
I got my flash to ide card from http://www.dealextreme.com. Very cheap and free delivery  ;)
Wish list: Galaga, Pacman, Pooyan, Star Wars cockpit, Gauntlet, Tron

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red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #5 on: July 28, 2008, 09:06:04 pm »
Well, I gave it a try and it failed.  No fault of anybody just a bad download of my area51mx.CHD file.  See below.  So now I am on the search again for it.

Paladin

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2008, 10:04:22 pm »
Looks like you've got the process down though!

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2008, 06:42:55 am »
Thanks to you :notworthy: :notworthy:

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2008, 07:07:06 pm »
Ok, I got a good copy of the area51mx.chd and I still get this error.  Are their any other files that should be on the disk like the area51mx folder?

SirPeale

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2008, 09:12:32 pm »
Are you sure you have the command precisely correct?  There are other command line flags, you might be missing something.

I'd ask over @ MameWorld since a ton of the devs hang out there.

Also, are you sure you have the correct hard drive specified?

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2008, 09:18:02 pm »
Thanks, yes I do have everything set correctly.  I checked and double checked.  I am going to try to burn it again tomorrow with adding the folder.  Maybe it needs the other files to be complete?  I will try to go to mameworld tomorrow and ask there.  Right now I got to get to bed, thanks again!

SirPeale

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2008, 09:33:58 pm »
What other files?  The only file you should need is area51mx.chd. 

Perhaps chdman is having an issue.  You could try using Linux dd instead.

Paladin

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2008, 11:37:27 am »
I know some ROMs change with different MAME releases, but I don't know if CHD files do.  Perhaps download a newer version of MAME to try a newer version of chdman.

SirPeale

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #13 on: July 30, 2008, 11:47:29 am »
I know some ROMs change with different MAME releases, but I don't know if CHD files do.  Perhaps download a newer version of MAME to try a newer version of chdman.

They do if they're found to be corrupt or problems.  I'm assuming he's using the most current version of chdman.exe

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #14 on: July 30, 2008, 12:08:56 pm »
Thanks again for the help, dunno what I would do without it.  I am using version 125.  Thanks

red_johnny

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #15 on: August 13, 2008, 04:53:22 pm »
I went ahead and bought a new hard drive.  I am going to try again with the flash drive when I have more time but right now I do not have the time.

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #16 on: August 13, 2008, 04:55:45 pm »
You could try using Linux dd instead.


Highly recommended.  dd is the tool of choice for full disk duplication.  Has been since way before Linux even existed.

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2008, 12:46:53 am »
I thought I knew this, but I'm just drawing a complete blank.

What is the expected MTBF or ESL of the Compact Flash card?
« Last Edit: August 15, 2008, 12:51:13 am by SavannahLion »

Paladin

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #18 on: August 15, 2008, 11:50:22 pm »
Here's some data I pulled off a website for the brand card I used:

Conforms to Compact Flash Card specification standard Fully compatible with PC Card ATA specification Support for 8-bit or 16-bit host data transfers Support PIO mode 4 Support Error Correcting Code (ECC) function to detect and correct errors. Support In System Programming (ISP) function to load the firmware. Supports power down commands and sleep mode Support Wear Leverage function to maximize data endurance. Non-volatile storage�]no battery required�^ +5 Volts or +3.3 Volts operation. MTBF > 1,000,000 hours Durability�GMinimum 10,000 insertion/removal cycles Low weight Noiseless Low profile

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #19 on: September 04, 2008, 06:01:59 am »
what fat system do i use,fat32 or fat 16.i have the same question for when i duplicate a arcade hard drive.thanks for your time and have a nice day

SavannahLion

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #20 on: September 04, 2008, 11:02:22 am »
what fat system do i use,fat32 or fat 16.

It really doesn't matter, you're mirroring an existing drive so it's whatever file system the original arcade uses.

M.Lanza

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Re: HOW TO: Use a compactflash card to replace an arcade hard drive
« Reply #21 on: September 06, 2008, 04:51:32 am »
Can I use this to back up the hard drive in my megatouch?
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