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Main => Buy/Sell/Trade - non-retail => Topic started by: JoyMonkey on March 26, 2004, 04:38:05 pm

Title: WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: JoyMonkey on March 26, 2004, 04:38:05 pm

Anyone know the best place to pick one up? Right now I'm looking at www.pcengines.ch or www.siliconkit.com .
Does anyone have any experience dealing with either one? I'm only interested in buying one right now, though I notice SiliconKit offer a good discount if I buy 10 or more.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: maraxle on March 26, 2004, 06:11:03 pm

www.mini-itx.com has them too

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: Edgedamage on March 29, 2004, 09:53:39 am

These folks have them.
http://adis.ca/store/cfdisk.5d.php

I also was thinking of getting one but the price of a 256 meg card was only $30 cheaper than a 40gig HDD I scrapped the idea.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: SirPeale on March 29, 2004, 11:48:50 am

Thanks for the link, Edge!

True about the price, but if you're going for a very quiet cabinet, or one that boots faaaaaaaaast, this would be great.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: JoyMonkey on March 29, 2004, 12:53:56 pm

I ended up ordering one from http://www.siliconkit.com
I went for the model that requires an IDE cable to attach (some models insert straight into the motherboards IDE connector and look pretty flimsy).
It cost $26 with shipping, I ordered yesterday (Sunday) and they shipped it  early today.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: Edgedamage on March 29, 2004, 01:34:30 pm

I will get one of those when the prices of micro drives drop.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: toto on April 21, 2004, 09:49:42 am

I bought  at http://siliconkit.com several times
very good and fast delivery

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: rchadd on April 25, 2004, 09:38:45 pm

http://www.cfide.co.uk/

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: krick on April 28, 2004, 05:29:39 pm

Quote from: Peale on March 29, 2004, 11:48:50 am

True about the price, but if you're going for a very quiet cabinet, or one that boots faaaaaaaaast, this would be great.

Isn't there some problem with CompactFlash having a limit on the number of read/writes?  I seem to remember someone mentioning that under normal use with an operating system that makes frequent writes to the "drive" (swapfile? file system updates?) the cards will fail in a year or two.

Just curious if this problem still exists and if so, how are people getting around it.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: Edgedamage on April 29, 2004, 05:29:23 pm

Most are good for 1,000,000 read write cycles.

read here:
http://www.mikhailtech.com/articles/storage/kingstonsm64/page2.shtml

http://www.kanguru.com/cfmicrodrive.html

So letting windows use it to swap file might kill it in a few months. So getting a microdrive might be the better way to go.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: SirPeale on April 30, 2004, 08:34:12 am

Quote from: Edgedamage on April 29, 2004, 05:29:23 pm

So letting windows use it to swap file might kill it in a few months. So getting a microdrive might be the better way to go.

Something like that you wouldn't want to run Windows on it.  You'd want DOS.

Title: Re:WTB: CompactFlash to IDE adapter
Post by: JoyMonkey on April 30, 2004, 08:51:21 am

Quote from: Peale on April 30, 2004, 08:34:12 am

Quote from: Edgedamage on April 29, 2004, 05:29:23 pm

So letting windows use it to swap file might kill it in a few months. So getting a microdrive might be the better way to go.

Something like that you wouldn't want to run Windows on it.  You'd want DOS.

Yep, I'm using mine with a DOS setup; I just squeezed ArcadeOS, Vantage and all the roms etc. onto a 16mb card. The thing boots straight into a game in about 2 seconds!  :o