Thread
Compact Flash in se/30
Hi all,
I'm messing about with an SE/30 just now and wondered if anyone has managed to get compact flash cards working with them instead of hard disks.
I'm using an ACARD AEC-7720U which I managed to find on eBay for about $15 See http://tinyurl.com/2zoekk
And another eBay purchase IDE to Compact Flash adaptor ($5).
And a 4GB Compact Flash card.
The ACARD plugs into the SCSI cable in the Mac and you then plug in an IDE drive or in my case the Compact Flash adaptor. In theory it should all work however it's not for me.
If I plug the Compact Flash adaptor into a PC's IDE cable, it comes up ok as if it were a hard disk. If I plug an old IDE hard disk into the ACARD and the Mac, it sees it as a hard disk. Plugging the Compact Flash adaptor in to the ACARD and the Mac however doesn't work.
Apple's HD SC Setup 7.3.5 (Patched) doesn't see it at all.
SCSI Probe says 'No Data'
FWB Hard Disk Toolbox 2.0.5 says it's of type 'Processor' and won't do anything else.
Storeware 3.0 won't read it.
LaCie SilverLining v5.4 says it's a read only cartridge.
Is there any other software that might see it or is it dependent on the type or size of Compact Flash Card?
System 7.5.5 on the SE/30 btw with 80MB of RAM, Shiva Network card and currently a 1GB SCSI disk that makes the screen wobble a little, hence the search for a less power hungry solution.
I'm messing about with an SE/30 just now and wondered if anyone has managed to get compact flash cards working with them instead of hard disks.
I'm using an ACARD AEC-7720U which I managed to find on eBay for about $15 See http://tinyurl.com/2zoekk
And another eBay purchase IDE to Compact Flash adaptor ($5).
And a 4GB Compact Flash card.
The ACARD plugs into the SCSI cable in the Mac and you then plug in an IDE drive or in my case the Compact Flash adaptor. In theory it should all work however it's not for me.
If I plug the Compact Flash adaptor into a PC's IDE cable, it comes up ok as if it were a hard disk. If I plug an old IDE hard disk into the ACARD and the Mac, it sees it as a hard disk. Plugging the Compact Flash adaptor in to the ACARD and the Mac however doesn't work.
Apple's HD SC Setup 7.3.5 (Patched) doesn't see it at all.
SCSI Probe says 'No Data'
FWB Hard Disk Toolbox 2.0.5 says it's of type 'Processor' and won't do anything else.
Storeware 3.0 won't read it.
LaCie SilverLining v5.4 says it's a read only cartridge.
Is there any other software that might see it or is it dependent on the type or size of Compact Flash Card?
System 7.5.5 on the SE/30 btw with 80MB of RAM, Shiva Network card and currently a 1GB SCSI disk that makes the screen wobble a little, hence the search for a less power hungry solution.
A couple of comments/suggestions, but no promises. Silverlining v5.x knows nowt about ATA. That comes with v6, and certainly that is when the light of USB dawns, at least with v6.2.1, which I use from SE/30 to the end of the 68K machines.
JDW, 003 and others had posted about power requirements and additional PSUs in upgraded SE/30s in the Pre-Dive. Those threads now being gone, you might try a PM to JDW for some of his experience.
de
Great project and I hope it works.
Try a different CF card. Even an 8MB card is good enough to install System 6 on an SE/30. From everything that I have read, CF-->IDE adapters are fussy about the card which will work.
Try the combination in a more conventional Mac. The SE/30 and early Mac IIs have quirks.
Try a different CF card. Even an 8MB card is good enough to install System 6 on an SE/30. From everything that I have read, CF-->IDE adapters are fussy about the card which will work.
Try the combination in a more conventional Mac. The SE/30 and early Mac IIs have quirks.
See my thread over at 68Kmla. I'm looking to do the same thing off a SCSI port. Some ideas but haven't bought anything to try yet.
See if you can format the card to an HFS drive on an ATA Mac, then move it to the SCSI adapter. Just a thought.
Does anyone make a 50 pin SCSI to CF adapter? I'd be interested in replacing some of my hard drives, too.
Only Artmix as far as anyone knows. I'm going to try SCSI->PCMCIA->CF as soon as my SCSI->PCMCIA box arrives.
Didn't see any PM for me today, so I suppose I will post a response in the thread...
I uploaded a photo of my hard drive to Flickr this evening. I added a description so you can see how I used the drive in the past and how I use it now.
On a separate but related topic, I acquired a rare Mac 512k with a 20MB Hyperdrive off EBAY recently. I was shocked to open the case only to see that it had pretty much the same drive and PSU setup that I myself devised for adding the DGHS internally! I have started a new thread on that, with photos and descriptions. In a nutshell, the Hyperdrive setup is almost exacly the same as my SE/30 secondary PSU implementation, with the exception that GCC added more noise filters and chokes to the power line, which probably would have been a good idea for me to do as well.
You can get 'flash cards' with an IDE socket on them already - meaning that once you sort out the SCSI to IDE adaptor, you don't need a CF card adaptor as well. Just plug in what looks like one of ye olde SCSI terminators (seriously it's like the size of the IDE connector x2) and away you go. Less parts, less $$, less space..... I'll check out specfically what make/model they are at work tomorrow...we've just bought a box of 50 to put into some XP embedded boxes we're building.
I couldn't get the compact flash adaptor to work at all in the Mac so I tried to sort out what was causing the issue.
First I ditched the CF adaptor. I've no other CF cards than the 4GB one currently so I couldn't test to see if different brands/sizes of cards would work and randomly buying stuff from eBay could get expensive.
Next I plugged in a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor and an old 6GB Toshiba laptop drive from an old Compaq. That worked but I was getting bus errors transferring data between drives. I was powering the extra drives from an old PC power supply so as to eliminate any power issues too to no avail.
Next I plugged in a 13.6GB 3.5" Maxtor IDE drive and that worked absolutely perfectly. Model No is 91366U4. Not so surprising given that the later Maxtor drives are listed as compatible by ACARD.
However, the goal was to swap the 1GB SCSI drive out which was causing a wobbly screen for something less power hungry. The thinking was that the drive was causing the wobble on the screen due to power issues.
Anyway, I noticed that the screen wasn't wobbling when the old SCSI drive was out from under the screen so the wobble must be caused by electromagnetic radiation from the drive in proximity to the screen. The odd thing is that it's an IBM 1GB drive pulled from another Apple with 'Apple approved' on it.
So, I reassembled everything with the 13GB Maxtor drive in and the ACARD SCSI-IDE bridge in place. It sticks out sideways towards the PSU so I wasn't sure it would fit, but it does with about 1mm to spare. The card sticks down lower than the drive so you have to tilt the drive slightly or dremel a slot in the drive tray in which the card can sit.
I switched the Mac back on to find there was no interference or wobble on the screen. [
] ]'>
So, I've left the 13GB drive in there. It's almost silent too so that's a bonus and with a 2MB cache and 7200rpm it's quite a bit quicker than the old drive. Speedometer rates it at over 3x quicker than a Mac Classic.
I'm not sure what I'll do with 13GB of space on an SE/30 and with a 10Mbit ethernet card it's no server, but it's a nice machine now and free from screen wobble.
First I ditched the CF adaptor. I've no other CF cards than the 4GB one currently so I couldn't test to see if different brands/sizes of cards would work and randomly buying stuff from eBay could get expensive.
Next I plugged in a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor and an old 6GB Toshiba laptop drive from an old Compaq. That worked but I was getting bus errors transferring data between drives. I was powering the extra drives from an old PC power supply so as to eliminate any power issues too to no avail.
Next I plugged in a 13.6GB 3.5" Maxtor IDE drive and that worked absolutely perfectly. Model No is 91366U4. Not so surprising given that the later Maxtor drives are listed as compatible by ACARD.
However, the goal was to swap the 1GB SCSI drive out which was causing a wobbly screen for something less power hungry. The thinking was that the drive was causing the wobble on the screen due to power issues.
Anyway, I noticed that the screen wasn't wobbling when the old SCSI drive was out from under the screen so the wobble must be caused by electromagnetic radiation from the drive in proximity to the screen. The odd thing is that it's an IBM 1GB drive pulled from another Apple with 'Apple approved' on it.
So, I reassembled everything with the 13GB Maxtor drive in and the ACARD SCSI-IDE bridge in place. It sticks out sideways towards the PSU so I wasn't sure it would fit, but it does with about 1mm to spare. The card sticks down lower than the drive so you have to tilt the drive slightly or dremel a slot in the drive tray in which the card can sit.
I switched the Mac back on to find there was no interference or wobble on the screen. [
] ]'>So, I've left the 13GB drive in there. It's almost silent too so that's a bonus and with a 2MB cache and 7200rpm it's quite a bit quicker than the old drive. Speedometer rates it at over 3x quicker than a Mac Classic.
I'm not sure what I'll do with 13GB of space on an SE/30 and with a 10Mbit ethernet card it's no server, but it's a nice machine now and free from screen wobble.
Happy squeals from me! [] ]'>
Later I suppose you could try a Maxtor laptop drive, or an IBM Microdrive.
I'll let you know how the SCSI-PCMCIA stunt goes.
] ]'>Later I suppose you could try a Maxtor laptop drive, or an IBM Microdrive.
Approx $/GB ratio? And are they sized in GB or Gb?
That would be at the PPCMLA, non? I'll delete the nitpick when you edit.
I'll let you know how the SCSI-PCMCIA stunt goes.
b'n'B....bits 'n' bytes...stick a big G in front of that and it's still a big number
The ones we are using are only 1GB (our XPe OS is only 300MB so there was no need to go bigger), but they are available up to 4GB and I guess 8GB is on the horizon... 1GB cards are costing us about $35, though they retail at about double that.I forgot to check out the make/model, I'll look tomorrow....
Here's the URL to those IDE flash cards:
http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=26&LangNo=0
http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=26&LangNo=0
Hmm...site is in Japanese. Has anyone ordered from this company?
Yes, I have ordered from ARTMIX. When you write them, owner Manabu Sakai will respond to you in English (not perfect, but readable). He accepts PayPal payments. But watch out! If you ask too many questions, he'll get his feathers ruffled. He likes people who pay him money without too many questions (don't we all). More specifically, I've had run-ins with the man in the past over my performance-related questions concerning his CF adapter solution. He absolutely refuses to give you a straight answer, just citing a bunch of meaningless techno-jargon. I asked him how the performance "feels" when using his CF card solution versus a normal hard disk (tests he certain has done himself), but he would only cite specs. I personally don't care about the theory, I want to know the experimental! But since no one on this site or other classic Mac sites have purchased this particular product from Manabu before, there is no written report for us (real world usage data). Hence, you would be the first to acquire one of these and offer us some insight.
I haven't seen that one specifically, but I've seen a few like it. It's a whole lot easier when you don't have to worry about putting in a SCSI to IDE adaptor 
Are there issues with the number of rewrites?
Kallikak & Flash!, perhaps you two gentlemen could persuade your fellow countryman, Greg Ewing, to pursue a SCSI Flash hack! And it's not like there's a plethora of SCSI options are there for Flash either, as there are for IDE.
Of course, the best possible flash solution for the SE/30 is a Solid State Disk. But I've yet to find one that is reasonably priced, even after all these years of there being manufactured and sold in 4GB sizes (ideal for the SE/30). The benefits of the SSD is that it has built-in remapping which gives you a longer useful life out of the flash drive. Most SSDs I've seen guarantee 11 years or more. Without remapping, and using a common CF card solution (even like what Manabu Sakai offers), you very well may only get a couple years of useful life out of it. SSD's also have more performance optimizations, which may even be of some benefit on our slow SE/30's SCSI implementation. (Keep in mind that the SE/30 doesn't support hard drive DMA, only PIO -- sorry, I don't know which PIO mode though).
Of course, the best possible flash solution for the SE/30 is a Solid State Disk. But I've yet to find one that is reasonably priced, even after all these years of there being manufactured and sold in 4GB sizes (ideal for the SE/30). The benefits of the SSD is that it has built-in remapping which gives you a longer useful life out of the flash drive. Most SSDs I've seen guarantee 11 years or more. Without remapping, and using a common CF card solution (even like what Manabu Sakai offers), you very well may only get a couple years of useful life out of it. SSD's also have more performance optimizations, which may even be of some benefit on our slow SE/30's SCSI implementation. (Keep in mind that the SE/30 doesn't support hard drive DMA, only PIO -- sorry, I don't know which PIO mode though).
Yes, I forget exactly what the theoretical number of re-writes is....however they are designed to be used as HD's for 'industrial' purposes and therefore have a higher rating than your average standard flash card. In our case with the XPe system once we load the OS onto it, it never has to write to that drive again (we have a standard HD for all the other data files)
As a side note, I always find sentences with "it it", "that that" and "had had" very amusing. Sometimes there is no other way to write the sentence
Going by the URL I'd say that Greg is a kiwi (a person of New Zealand persuasion is called a kiwi) and whilst it is a common myth that NZ is part of Australia there are several million people in this part of the world who beg to differ! In fact it could be said that Australia is part of NZ.... NZ is made up of islands, the main ones being inventively named The North Island, The South Island, Stewart Island, and West Island - the west one being Australia [
] ]'>Now just to throw a spanner in the works, I am actually a kiwi.... I have been living in Australia long enough to lose my kiwi accent, but not long enough to call myself an Australian. Besides, the All Blacks kick the Wallabies ass 95% of the time (sure Aussie won the world cup....but can you say Bledisloe Cup!?!?!) and I don't want to be a member of a country that can't play footy [
)] ]'>Not a simple hack at all, as the Compact Flash I/O format is already basically IDE.
True, SCSI wouldn't be a simple hack relative to IDE. But upon reading through Mr. Ewing's work, I can see he is no simpleton either. Indeed, he appears to me to be energized by a challenge, especially one that produces a useful tool or toy in the end. Such would be the case for a SCSI flash drive -- something that would be wildly popular among classic Mac owners such as ourselves.
But despite all this, keep in mind my post above about remapping (rewrites and lifespan of the flash). Even if Mr. Ewing were to create a hack for us, it is unlikely to involve the level of detail that most SSD's have built-in.
But despite all this, keep in mind my post above about remapping (rewrites and lifespan of the flash). Even if Mr. Ewing were to create a hack for us, it is unlikely to involve the level of detail that most SSD's have built-in.
I recommend the Adtron SDDS SCSI PC card drive (3.5 inch form factor, 5 V supply voltage). (Search for "Adtron" in the forum.) I have one in use for a while now as a boot device for a Performa 475. It performs very well with a Kingston 1 GB (100x), little difference compared to the original harddisk drive. The drive probably could be installed in place of a floppy disk drive, to swap media without need to open the case. I am not very familiar with early compact macs. Probably an unused expansion slot has enough space to allow the drive to be mounted without removing the original drives, with access from the rear side of the mac. The drive itself is pretty shallow, it is only the bezel that blows it up to the size of a 3.5" FDD. Suppliers can be found, still, but prices may vary anywhere (!) up to USD 400 (ouch) plus shipping and tax -
There are a number of cheap desktop PCMCIA adapters on ebay that come with a PCI or ISA SCSI card. These should work.
There are others that come with a card that uses a 40 pin cable, which might be IDE or some proprietary connection. Also, there are external units like this one that use a parallel port connection, easily confused with SCSI. In addition, some of the SCSI ones have limitations on the size of the flash cards they can read. Caveat emptor
There are others that come with a card that uses a 40 pin cable, which might be IDE or some proprietary connection. Also, there are external units like this one that use a parallel port connection, easily confused with SCSI. In addition, some of the SCSI ones have limitations on the size of the flash cards they can read. Caveat emptor
register, thanks for bring this to our attention. I checked out the Adtron product page and I see that it is indeed a SCSI flash drive. So the questions then become:
1) What is the voltage and current requirements? Obviously, we wouldn't want to run that AC adapter cord outside the Mac, and I'm not sure we'd want to tap the 110VAC to keep the adapter inside. Therefore, we would need to know the voltage/current requirements to determine how best to power this. If it works on 5v or 12v, then the HD power connector that's already available in the SE/30 would be perfect.
2) What is the exact cable adapter we would need to match the internal SCSI cable of the SE/30 to the SCSI-2 connector on this flash drive?
3) Can this drive truly boot the SE/30?
4) Are there any incompatibilities? (i.e., no Utility software will work, etc.)
1) What is the voltage and current requirements? Obviously, we wouldn't want to run that AC adapter cord outside the Mac, and I'm not sure we'd want to tap the 110VAC to keep the adapter inside. Therefore, we would need to know the voltage/current requirements to determine how best to power this. If it works on 5v or 12v, then the HD power connector that's already available in the SE/30 would be perfect.
2) What is the exact cable adapter we would need to match the internal SCSI cable of the SE/30 to the SCSI-2 connector on this flash drive?
3) Can this drive truly boot the SE/30?
4) Are there any incompatibilities? (i.e., no Utility software will work, etc.)
This is some information about the Adtron SDDS SCSI PC card drive (3.5" form factor).
As I have no SE/30 to perform a test, I can not tell if it will work for this machine. If there are justifiable doubts wether it could work, I might try to find one and check this.
I have only tested consumer grade CF-cards up to now. Industrial grade CF cards should work anyway. Be aware of known incompatibilities of recent SD cards with not so recent PC-card-adaptors (_High Capacity SD_).
Other details are: The front bezel of the drive shows a pushbutton to eject a PC-card (sorry, no auto eject mechanism). It also has a two colour LED, showing green light when powered and idle, orange when busy, no light when off ;-)
If you strive for better access to the PC-card slot: the adaptor fits well into an external enclosure for 3.5" removable media drives (like the small Syquest or ZIP drives).
In case of need for more detailed information, just ask.
The supply voltage is 5 Volts DC, max. current 1 Ampere. The power connector is a standard 4 pin Molex type, like in any 3.5" harddisk drive. There is a DC/DC converter on board to source PC cards which require a higher supply voltage (this might be a hint towards a possible use of this device inside a PowerBook; but do not expect to use any other cards than storage devices.)
The board has got a standard 50 pin male connector, slotted, for use with an usual IDC connector for internal SCSI drives (I would call "usual" what I have seen inside any LC up to beige G3). Termination ON/OFF may be set with a jumper, as well as the SCSI ID number. There is a jumper to "disable disconnects", also.
I have verified the drive to be completely operational as a boot device for a Performa 475 (HFS/Mac OS 8.1) and a beige G3 (HFS+/Mac OS 9.2.2). It works well with several different types of Flash storage cards inside the PC-card slot (PC-Card, CF within a PC-card-adaptor, SD within a PC-card-adapter).
As I have no SE/30 to perform a test, I can not tell if it will work for this machine. If there are justifiable doubts wether it could work, I might try to find one and check this.
The Apple drive setup seems not to work for this drive, not if ResEdited the usual way, also. FWB Hardisk Toolkit works just fine. I avoid possible problems just by formatting the PC-card in the slot of a PowerBook running Tiger, using the latest version of Disk Utility.
I have only tested consumer grade CF-cards up to now. Industrial grade CF cards should work anyway. Be aware of known incompatibilities of recent SD cards with not so recent PC-card-adaptors (_High Capacity SD_).
Other details are: The front bezel of the drive shows a pushbutton to eject a PC-card (sorry, no auto eject mechanism). It also has a two colour LED, showing green light when powered and idle, orange when busy, no light when off ;-)
If you strive for better access to the PC-card slot: the adaptor fits well into an external enclosure for 3.5" removable media drives (like the small Syquest or ZIP drives).
In case of need for more detailed information, just ask.
Um, the website reports EOL. I did a Google search and turned up no vendors. Assuming it will work on an SE/30, how exactly does one go about obtaining one?
What about this instead? http://www.adtron.com/products/Sdds.html – it could be mounted in the FDD bracket and CF cards inserted through the floppy slot.
Then there's this: http://www.adtron.com/products/S35fa.html
Though I'm still at a loss to find any for sale or price.
What about this instead? http://www.adtron.com/products/Sdds.html – it could be mounted in the FDD bracket and CF cards inserted through the floppy slot.
Then there's this: http://www.adtron.com/products/S35fa.html
Though I'm still at a loss to find any for sale or price.
Check this out. I found a retailer offering SCSI PCMCIA drives for use with samplers. They're a little pricey for me, but might be suited to some here.
From experience, I can tell you that if it works on a sampler, it'll work on a Mac and vice versa. Zip drives excepted.
There's also this, from my fritter blog:
From experience, I can tell you that if it works on a sampler, it'll work on a Mac and vice versa. Zip drives excepted.
There's also this, from my fritter blog:
There is a German supplier that might have devices similar to the Adtron SDDS in stock. Got to http://www.apdate.de and look for
S35P-C03N-101
Adtron PC Card SCSI Drive, 1 Slot
or
S35P-C01N-101
Adtron PC Card SCSI Drive, 2 Slots
But fasten your seat belts securely before you ask for a price. Keep in mind this is stuff intended for military use, originally.
This thing looks very similar to the SDDS I referred to. If you obtained one, it should be fine.
This might be the best solution if there would not be an issue with the price. Drives like this are optimised for reliability and performance as well, to be used in aviation and spacecraft appliocations. You will not have the option to replace defective flash memory in this drive, though. That would be the benefit of obtaining a card drive for standard CF cards, only. A CF card that exceeds the rated number of writing cycles could be replaced for a fraction of the price of a real solid state disk.
A used one would be nice, but a drive like this in professional use will be replaced only after some heavy usage, I think. So I would not pay much for a used one.
The device shown in the picture provides the same functionality as the Adtron SDDS. I can not identify the brand. The board layout looks different to the device I use. The price seems to be fine, compared to other sources, because you get the device ready to use with an enclosure.
I was thinking of doing a CF project but decided against it. Even though CF drives are quieter, faster and cooler they don't have enough read/write cycles in them to make them reliable enough for long term use. I don't like the value equation of solid state drives but think they would be a better choice since they are designed to be used as hard drives. CF cards generally aren't, even high performance ones. I might consider a micro-drive, though.
The numbers really mean very little to me, but I've heard from so many places that this is not an issue anymore... and if used with an OS that doesn't swap...
CF cards are not intended for reliable long term use in the first place. You might better think of something like a ZIP drive to compare with. But CF cards are pretty cheap, and the smallest number of _write_ cycles I read about was 10k. The number of read cycles seems not to be a limiting factor in practical use. In fact I had a lot of defective removable disk drives and media (may it be ZIP, Bernoulli, Syqest, CD, Floppy or any else), but even the oldest CF devices I have do work well, still.
A micro drive for use as a replacement for a standard hdd would give you the benefits of a small footprint, low power consumption and fast writing access. It would combine the disadvantages of both CF cards (less reliable) and usual harddisk drives (moving parts), also.
I think your choice should depend on the use you expect to have for the device.
- For frequent use with heavy writing load, where writing access performace is of importance, have a SCSI-IDE converter in combination with a new silent IDE harddisk (available in 2.5" and 3.5" varieties).
- If your system has no fan and you need it to be even quieter than a modern silent harddisk but with top performance, have a solid state disk or an industrial grade dual CF adaptor with two CF cards in striping RAID mode (level 0).
- In any other case a recent CF card in an appropriate adaptor should do well in a vintage machine. (Do not use this drive for virtual memory.)
- If price matters (as it usually does), you might consider an external SCSI enlosure with a long cable, hiding away the drive in a place where it is allowed to be noisy, and use up used server harddisks (SCSI). You might have to throw in a few extra bucks for a recent SCSI-a-lot-pins to standard SCSI adaptor, but gain a cheap supply for high speed drives. This especially applies to people with access to server farms, where usable drives get swapped for new ones based on a fixed schedule.
- And, a more hypothetical case, if the price should not matter at all, have an UPS buffered RAM-disk and stream the contents to a NAS.
In any case you always should have a working backup of your important data ;-)
The read/write cycle limitation is certainly real, but it is not nearly as serious a problem as most people seem to think. Modern flash employs sophisticated wear-leveling strategies to avoid cycling any one bit (or group of bits) excessively, as well as automated self-repair (using spare "sectors"). Consequently, there are relatively few practical scenarios where one would encounter failures due to cell wear-out. Overall, the MTBF of a modern flash drive is about the same as that of a hard drive. Indeed, in some cases, it's far higher.
Don't. I tried one in my Newton (via the ATAsupport driver) and found it to be horrible. The problem with MicroDrives is that they spin up and down constantly. This is not a major problem when used in a digital camera, but it is a serious problem when used in anything else (like a Newton or Mac). Just imagine if your regular hard drive spun up and down continually every few seconds. It almost becomes unusable it's so slow.
With flash, you don't have to worry about spin-ups or spin-downs.
Eh, never heard of that before. The MicroDrives in iPod Minis certainly don't do this... sure it's not to do with the newton ATA driver?
How can I? Other than my camera, I have no other means to use the MicroDrive. But I can say that I hear it spin up and down in my camera too. But then again, my camera doesn't write date to the drive for extended periods of time either.
So clearly, someone else needs to confirm my findings with a method other than a Newton or digital camera.
But even if someone finds that the Microdrive doesn't spin up and down "as much" as I have found, the fact remains there will be spin ups and downs as the Microdrive is not made to spin constantly forever.
I've read this thread with great interest, as for some time I've been considering the options for a software-based (FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0) RAID 1 array in a heavily upgraded SE/30 (accelerator, video card, RAM, etc.) utilizing the best overall storage technology. This was discussed thoroughly prior to the tragic forum data loss of early 2007, with valuable contributions by JDW and TylerEss, among others. A couple of criteria are that the primary performance concern is access time and at least one of the two drives (and preferably both) must be installed inside the machine so that the HDD activity light can be attached.
I'd largely settled on solid state drives due to their silence, low power usage, and SCSI interface (to preserve the SCSI chain's "purity" and thereby avoid the latency of a bridge chip). Late last year I found a relatively reasonably priced supplier that doesn't charge at mil spec levels (as Adtron and many others do), but have been hoping for further price drops (plus no one offers 2.5-inch SSDs with the appropriate interface any longer, so I'd either have to Velcro two 3.5-inch drives together--they're relatively thin--or place one in an external enclosure).
Now I'm intrigued by the idea of using either SCSI-CF adapters or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combinations, along with flash cards, for a few reasons: significantly lower cost, long-term availability, and in particular the ability to replace a CF card should one wear out while still preserving the adapter(s) investment. If I forgot to disable virtual memory for an SSD, the financial hit borders on being exponentially higher than with a CF card.
My concern with using CF over SSDs is performance. Yes, I'm aware that the bus on these old machines is quite limited, but as others have noted faster HDDs do make them feel more snappy, so I wonder whether there would be a noticeable difference between CF and SSDs, especially in access time. In the past I asked Manabu (artmix.com) whether his PowerMonster RX (SCSI-IDE adapter) with a 7200 RPM HDD or CF PowerMonster with CF card would be the faster option, and he indicated the former--that a modern HDD would be faster than CF. The lowendmac user review of the CF PowerMonster referenced above indicates that performance was comparable to a hard disk drive, but not whether the drive being compared to CF is 5400 or 7200 RPM.
I have noted register's great post above delineating usage-based recommendations and an earlier relevant post by JDW, but my concern is more specific. Here are the questions that this post suggests:
1) Keeping in mind the limitations of the SE/30 SCSI bus (1.25 MB/sec), which would provide faster perceived access times, SSD or CF?
2) Would it be enough of a difference to at least somewhat justify a significantly higher cost?
3) If CF is recommended, is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other (SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination)?
4) Again, if CF is recommended, would the industrial grade adapters provide better performance than what artmix.com offers? He doesn't provide specs, as we know.
I'm not concerned with having the fastest specifications, just the fastest file access and application loading that I can perceive in real-world usage.
Incidentally, the Adtron products referenced earlier by register are available at WDL Systems but are designed to be installed in a 3.5-inch bay. Thus, they have LEDs on their faceplate, not pins for the activity light as on compact Macs, which knocks them out of consideration in my case--unless perhaps the LED connection could be hacked for compact use (though I'm averse to doing that).
I'd largely settled on solid state drives due to their silence, low power usage, and SCSI interface (to preserve the SCSI chain's "purity" and thereby avoid the latency of a bridge chip). Late last year I found a relatively reasonably priced supplier that doesn't charge at mil spec levels (as Adtron and many others do), but have been hoping for further price drops (plus no one offers 2.5-inch SSDs with the appropriate interface any longer, so I'd either have to Velcro two 3.5-inch drives together--they're relatively thin--or place one in an external enclosure).
Now I'm intrigued by the idea of using either SCSI-CF adapters or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combinations, along with flash cards, for a few reasons: significantly lower cost, long-term availability, and in particular the ability to replace a CF card should one wear out while still preserving the adapter(s) investment. If I forgot to disable virtual memory for an SSD, the financial hit borders on being exponentially higher than with a CF card.
My concern with using CF over SSDs is performance. Yes, I'm aware that the bus on these old machines is quite limited, but as others have noted faster HDDs do make them feel more snappy, so I wonder whether there would be a noticeable difference between CF and SSDs, especially in access time. In the past I asked Manabu (artmix.com) whether his PowerMonster RX (SCSI-IDE adapter) with a 7200 RPM HDD or CF PowerMonster with CF card would be the faster option, and he indicated the former--that a modern HDD would be faster than CF. The lowendmac user review of the CF PowerMonster referenced above indicates that performance was comparable to a hard disk drive, but not whether the drive being compared to CF is 5400 or 7200 RPM.
I have noted register's great post above delineating usage-based recommendations and an earlier relevant post by JDW, but my concern is more specific. Here are the questions that this post suggests:
1) Keeping in mind the limitations of the SE/30 SCSI bus (1.25 MB/sec), which would provide faster perceived access times, SSD or CF?
2) Would it be enough of a difference to at least somewhat justify a significantly higher cost?
3) If CF is recommended, is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other (SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination)?
4) Again, if CF is recommended, would the industrial grade adapters provide better performance than what artmix.com offers? He doesn't provide specs, as we know.
I'm not concerned with having the fastest specifications, just the fastest file access and application loading that I can perceive in real-world usage.
Incidentally, the Adtron products referenced earlier by register are available at WDL Systems but are designed to be installed in a 3.5-inch bay. Thus, they have LEDs on their faceplate, not pins for the activity light as on compact Macs, which knocks them out of consideration in my case--unless perhaps the LED connection could be hacked for compact use (though I'm averse to doing that).
With the low power-draw of the CF cards, I think one could do RAID 1 inside the SE/30 and sleep a little more soundly at night. Remus RAID will do RAID on the onboard SCSI of the SE/30, despite it not being SCSI Manager 4.3 compliant.
Of course, this would require the purchase of TWO SCSI-IDE adaptors, unless someone knows of one that supports both master and slave. The acard SCSIDE chip supports dual devices, but I don't think the adaptors do.
I'm considering making a run of SCSI -> Dual CF adaptors for use in old computers like these Macs, but it depends highly upon how expensive the acard SCSIDE chips cost. acard hasn't returned my email yet.
I don't think there's likely to be any huge performance difference between the CF and the dedicated SSD: the difference between an ancient hard drive with 20 or 30ms access time and newer drive with 7ms access time is about 33% reduction in boot-time. I'm guessing that a further reduction into the 2ms range will bring improvment, but not dramatic improvement. Until someone benchmarks a CF-mac against an SSD-mac, we'll never know for sure!
Of course, this would require the purchase of TWO SCSI-IDE adaptors, unless someone knows of one that supports both master and slave. The acard SCSIDE chip supports dual devices, but I don't think the adaptors do.
I'm considering making a run of SCSI -> Dual CF adaptors for use in old computers like these Macs, but it depends highly upon how expensive the acard SCSIDE chips cost. acard hasn't returned my email yet.
I don't think there's likely to be any huge performance difference between the CF and the dedicated SSD: the difference between an ancient hard drive with 20 or 30ms access time and newer drive with 7ms access time is about 33% reduction in boot-time. I'm guessing that a further reduction into the 2ms range will bring improvment, but not dramatic improvement. Until someone benchmarks a CF-mac against an SSD-mac, we'll never know for sure!
My guess is that CF is going to get poor WRITE speeds (i.e., less than any old 7200rpm drive you can find for an SE/30). From what I've read, SSD's seem to have WRITE performance optimized. You can see that in the bar graph at the bottom of this ExperCOM page. They claim Random WRITE speeds that are faster than a SATA drive at 5400rpm. Even so, who uses a 5400rpm drive now except financially poor notebook users? No doubt the WRITE performance of even this SSD is noticeably less than a 7200rpm drive, which most of us are accustomed to. And the Sequential WRITE performance is bad on this SSD, which makes me think a CF would be even worse.
But again, we need to compare benchmarks of CFs versus SSDs. When is that realistically going to happen? When a rich man among us either performs those tests himself or when he submits a sample of each product to someone on this site. Sorry to be pessimistic, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
I would love to do the tests, folks, but I am not a rich man. If someone wants to ship me something to test though, then that's a different matter altogether (and yes, I would ship the units back to you after I am done). But I would need to have all the required adapters in that case, as my SE/30 is setup only for 50-pin SCSI connections at the moment.
But again, we need to compare benchmarks of CFs versus SSDs. When is that realistically going to happen? When a rich man among us either performs those tests himself or when he submits a sample of each product to someone on this site. Sorry to be pessimistic, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
I would love to do the tests, folks, but I am not a rich man. If someone wants to ship me something to test though, then that's a different matter altogether (and yes, I would ship the units back to you after I am done). But I would need to have all the required adapters in that case, as my SE/30 is setup only for 50-pin SCSI connections at the moment.
I appreciate both of your input, TylerEss and JDW.
While JDW notes the slower write performance of flash memory versus HDDs (and that a CF card implementation is likely to be slightly slower yet than an SSD), nonetheless I don't expect my usage to involve significant write activity, so this seems to be an acceptable tradeoff given the other advantages of flash memory. Looking at online articles on replacing HDDs with CF cards or SSDs, it seems that the difference is most noticeable with sustained writes, and I don't anticipate doing large file transfers and the like.
For RAID mirroring software, TylerEss mentioned Remus. I have access to v1.4 (full, not Lite; floppy disk) as well as FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0 (CD) but have used neither. Any opinions as to which is preferable?
I'm a newbie to CF cards, and in my reading noticed that those supporting UDMA are recommeded in cases of HDD replacement. Is this or any other specification necessary with a vintage Mac? Anything one needs to look for?
Here are two possibilities:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211170
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208337
Tyler, is there anything special about that Acard chip that you're considering that might make it worthwhile to hold out in case your potential adapter production is feasible?
Finally, I'm hopeful for any reaction to these questions:
Is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other (SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination)?
On a vintage Mac, would industrial grade adapters provide noticeably better performance than consumer-level versions?
While JDW notes the slower write performance of flash memory versus HDDs (and that a CF card implementation is likely to be slightly slower yet than an SSD), nonetheless I don't expect my usage to involve significant write activity, so this seems to be an acceptable tradeoff given the other advantages of flash memory. Looking at online articles on replacing HDDs with CF cards or SSDs, it seems that the difference is most noticeable with sustained writes, and I don't anticipate doing large file transfers and the like.
For RAID mirroring software, TylerEss mentioned Remus. I have access to v1.4 (full, not Lite; floppy disk) as well as FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0 (CD) but have used neither. Any opinions as to which is preferable?
I'm a newbie to CF cards, and in my reading noticed that those supporting UDMA are recommeded in cases of HDD replacement. Is this or any other specification necessary with a vintage Mac? Anything one needs to look for?
Here are two possibilities:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211170
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208337
Tyler, is there anything special about that Acard chip that you're considering that might make it worthwhile to hold out in case your potential adapter production is feasible?
Finally, I'm hopeful for any reaction to these questions:
Is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other (SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination)?
On a vintage Mac, would industrial grade adapters provide noticeably better performance than consumer-level versions?
The ACARD chip is just the SCSI-IDE chip that their adaptors are based upon. In the best possible case it'd be six months to a year before I had adaptors, so don't plan anything on them happening. :-D
If you want to do RAID on the SE/30, I don't think you have any choice but Remus; when I was looking into SE/30 RAID it was the only package I could find that didn't require SCSI Manager 4.3 support.
I would try to get CF cards that support UDMA just because I feel better about them, but chances are that it doesn't really matter all that much. If you get a PIO-only CF card, you'll be putting a lot of system load onto the SCSIDE chipset during disk activity. Since we don't actually have a native IDE controller, that system load from PIO isn't affecting the Mac's CPU at all. Then when you consider that the SCSIDE's embedded microcontroller is more powerful than our CPU, it seems inconsequential. I'd still get the UDMA CF cards just because I think the quality is a little higher.
Re: write speed of CF cards vs. SSD: The fastest CF cards you can get these days, 266x models, do UDMA at 40+ MB per second sustained on both read and write. Even the slowest DMA-supporting CF cards do upwards of 10MB/s read and write. Since the SCSI bus in the SE/30 maxes out at 1.25MB/s, any sustained-speed differences between drives are very unlikely to be noticed, in my opinion.
As you keep saying, JDW, what we need is tested facts! We have lots of really smart opinions, but they don't mean much compared to one real fact. :-D
If you want to do RAID on the SE/30, I don't think you have any choice but Remus; when I was looking into SE/30 RAID it was the only package I could find that didn't require SCSI Manager 4.3 support.
I would try to get CF cards that support UDMA just because I feel better about them, but chances are that it doesn't really matter all that much. If you get a PIO-only CF card, you'll be putting a lot of system load onto the SCSIDE chipset during disk activity. Since we don't actually have a native IDE controller, that system load from PIO isn't affecting the Mac's CPU at all. Then when you consider that the SCSIDE's embedded microcontroller is more powerful than our CPU, it seems inconsequential. I'd still get the UDMA CF cards just because I think the quality is a little higher.
Re: write speed of CF cards vs. SSD: The fastest CF cards you can get these days, 266x models, do UDMA at 40+ MB per second sustained on both read and write. Even the slowest DMA-supporting CF cards do upwards of 10MB/s read and write. Since the SCSI bus in the SE/30 maxes out at 1.25MB/s, any sustained-speed differences between drives are very unlikely to be noticed, in my opinion.
As you keep saying, JDW, what we need is tested facts! We have lots of really smart opinions, but they don't mean much compared to one real fact. :-D
Thank you TylerEss for this very informative and helpful post.
In addition to Remus 1.4, FWB HDT 3.0 also supports RAID, as their RAID Toolkit was merged with HDT beginning with that version:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Excellent+Review+of+Hard+Disk+ToolKit+3.0+in+April+Issue+of+MacAddict...-a054230665
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-53937232.html (this link refers to 3.01)
It requires System 7.5.3 and an 030 CPU.
I'm just wondering if anyone prefers one over the other (Remus or HDT), and if so, why. There isn't much substantive information about them on the Internet, especially regarding Remus.
Lastly, I'll try once more to solicit input on the following uncertainties, after which I suppose I'll have to assume that none is forthcoming:
Register's post above suggests that industrial grade CF adapters would provide better performance than consumer-level versions, which I'm sure is correct in an absolute sense, though I wonder whether this would be noticeable on the SE/30's 1.25MB/second bus. Any opinions, or is this another item to be filed under "testing required"?
Is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other: SCSI-CF or a SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination? My thinking is that if I ever wanted to change over to 2.5-inch IDE HDDs instead of CF cards, the latter option would allow for that. However, might there be any downside other than the added cost of IDE-CF adapters?
In addition to Remus 1.4, FWB HDT 3.0 also supports RAID, as their RAID Toolkit was merged with HDT beginning with that version:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Excellent+Review+of+Hard+Disk+ToolKit+3.0+in+April+Issue+of+MacAddict...-a054230665
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-53937232.html (this link refers to 3.01)
It requires System 7.5.3 and an 030 CPU.
I'm just wondering if anyone prefers one over the other (Remus or HDT), and if so, why. There isn't much substantive information about them on the Internet, especially regarding Remus.
Lastly, I'll try once more to solicit input on the following uncertainties, after which I suppose I'll have to assume that none is forthcoming:
Register's post above suggests that industrial grade CF adapters would provide better performance than consumer-level versions, which I'm sure is correct in an absolute sense, though I wonder whether this would be noticeable on the SE/30's 1.25MB/second bus. Any opinions, or is this another item to be filed under "testing required"?
Is there any advantage to one adapter choice over the other: SCSI-CF or a SCSI-IDE + IDE-CF combination? My thinking is that if I ever wanted to change over to 2.5-inch IDE HDDs instead of CF cards, the latter option would allow for that. However, might there be any downside other than the added cost of IDE-CF adapters?
Again, HDT 3.0 RAID isn't available on the SE/30 because it has a 53c80 SCSI controller instead of a 53c96. For this same reason, SoftRAID doesn't work on the SE/30 either. They both require SCSI Manager 4.3.
Does anyone know of any RAID software besides Remus that is known to work on the SE/30?
Does anyone know of any RAID software besides Remus that is known to work on the SE/30?
Is Remus compatible with System 6? I ask this because I for one have a SE/30 for the purpose of running multiple operating systems, included the wicked fast System 6. No doubt, I am not alone. So before putting a Remus raid on that SE/30, you may wish to check System compatibility
Ooooh. I never thought of doing RAID in System 6. That sounds awesome!
Certainly TylerEss is more expert than I am on these matters (which I've appreciated and have benefitted from), but allow me to explain why I conclude that FWB HDT 3.0 would support RAID on an SE/30:
1) My understanding is that no 68030 Macs included the NCR 53C96 SCSI controller and thus none support SCSI Manager 4.3. Only Centris, Quadra, and Power Mac models meet these requirements.
2) Some of FWB's products specify an 040 or later CPU under system requirements as a proxy for the above (e.g., RAID Toolkit 2.0, IIRC). Since it's not the minimum CPU itself that's necessary, adding a Turbo 040 won't do. The logic board must have an onboard 040 in such cases, and thus would also necessarily include the required SCSI controller.
3) Neither the HDT 3.0 retail box nor paper manual specify an 040 or later CPU, nor is any mention made of SCSI Manager 4.3. The only hardware requirement listed in the booklet other than RAM, a storage device, and a CD-ROM drive (for installation) is "any model of Macintosh/Power Macintosh with at least a 68030 procesor" (emphasis added). The RAID pages do not make any mention of additional requirements based on my initial reading.
Am I missing something else?
Regarding Remus, I can only comment on v1.4, which according to the retail box requires a 68020 CPU or above (or PowerPC), 4MB RAM, and System 7 or higher. I do not know whether earlier versions support RAID in System 6. The idea of running multiple operating systems on the same machine sounds nice, though I wonder if RAID would somehow interfere with this possibility (?).
Interestingly, HDT 3.0 allows mirroring of an exising volume, whereas Remus 1.4 does not. On the other hand, while HDT 3.0 supports RAID levels 0, 1, and spanning, Remus in addition supports levels 4 and 5 (but I'm only interested in mirroring).
Again, I'm just wondering if anyone prefers one over the other (Remus or HDT), and if so, why.
No opinions on my other questions regarding adapters (end of my previous post)?
1) My understanding is that no 68030 Macs included the NCR 53C96 SCSI controller and thus none support SCSI Manager 4.3. Only Centris, Quadra, and Power Mac models meet these requirements.
2) Some of FWB's products specify an 040 or later CPU under system requirements as a proxy for the above (e.g., RAID Toolkit 2.0, IIRC). Since it's not the minimum CPU itself that's necessary, adding a Turbo 040 won't do. The logic board must have an onboard 040 in such cases, and thus would also necessarily include the required SCSI controller.
3) Neither the HDT 3.0 retail box nor paper manual specify an 040 or later CPU, nor is any mention made of SCSI Manager 4.3. The only hardware requirement listed in the booklet other than RAM, a storage device, and a CD-ROM drive (for installation) is "any model of Macintosh/Power Macintosh with at least a 68030 procesor" (emphasis added). The RAID pages do not make any mention of additional requirements based on my initial reading.
Am I missing something else?
Regarding Remus, I can only comment on v1.4, which according to the retail box requires a 68020 CPU or above (or PowerPC), 4MB RAM, and System 7 or higher. I do not know whether earlier versions support RAID in System 6. The idea of running multiple operating systems on the same machine sounds nice, though I wonder if RAID would somehow interfere with this possibility (?).
Interestingly, HDT 3.0 allows mirroring of an exising volume, whereas Remus 1.4 does not. On the other hand, while HDT 3.0 supports RAID levels 0, 1, and spanning, Remus in addition supports levels 4 and 5 (but I'm only interested in mirroring).
Again, I'm just wondering if anyone prefers one over the other (Remus or HDT), and if so, why.
No opinions on my other questions regarding adapters (end of my previous post)?
Don't forget about RAID Tool Kit. It's functionality was folded into HDTK 3.0, but there were versions of RTK which predated HDTK 3.0 by a long while, and may work with older software and hardware which HDTK 3.0 eschews.
However, I don't see the point of using a RAID on an SE/30 except to get mirroring. I can't see where there'd be any performance improvement from striping, given the relative speeds of the SE/30s SCSI bus and any half-way-not-obsolete storage device.
Has the discussion above been in support of mirroring? It's not clear to me.
Tyler, I don't know what your price point goal is for the Acard chips, but there's an outfit on Ebay which has hundreds of used 7220Us for $30. It might be as easier to use those, especially if they would give you a volume discount. However, they don't include the power adapter cable, and their shipping is rather steep, so, for anyone just buying one or two adapters, you're better off buying mine for $39 plus shipping.
However, I don't see the point of using a RAID on an SE/30 except to get mirroring. I can't see where there'd be any performance improvement from striping, given the relative speeds of the SE/30s SCSI bus and any half-way-not-obsolete storage device.
Has the discussion above been in support of mirroring? It's not clear to me.
Tyler, I don't know what your price point goal is for the Acard chips, but there's an outfit on Ebay which has hundreds of used 7220Us for $30. It might be as easier to use those, especially if they would give you a volume discount. However, they don't include the power adapter cable, and their shipping is rather steep, so, for anyone just buying one or two adapters, you're better off buying mine for $39 plus shipping.
Yes, the RAID discussion has primarily involved mirroring.
Trag, would you provide more information about your adapters? Specifically, I'd like to know the following:
1) Do they have pin headers for the HDD activity light?
2) Onboard termination?
3) SCSI ID setting (presumably via jumpers)?
4) Are they SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE?
5) Is the size 2.5 or 3.5-inch? The former makes it easier to install a pair in the same machine for mirroring.
Trag, would you provide more information about your adapters? Specifically, I'd like to know the following:
1) Do they have pin headers for the HDD activity light?
2) Onboard termination?
3) SCSI ID setting (presumably via jumpers)?
4) Are they SCSI-CF or SCSI-IDE?
5) Is the size 2.5 or 3.5-inch? The former makes it easier to install a pair in the same machine for mirroring.
Info in PM, because this isn't the Trading Post forum. However, I do have postings for the 7220U in TP if you go back a ways. None of the info has changed.
While doing a little research on CF and Microdrives myself, I came upon this little snippet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive#CF_hard_drive_models_by_manufacturer
] ]'>
Question: does anyone know if on-disk cache is used bidirectionally, on writes as well as reads?
/edit/ here's a review - when they were $300.
/edit/ The Microdrive arrived; conquest thread
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive#CF_hard_drive_models_by_manufacturer
Seconds later, I discovered they were dirt cheap on ebay, so I bought a 4 GB one for $20 inc shipping. [
] ]'>Question: does anyone know if on-disk cache is used bidirectionally, on writes as well as reads?
/edit/ here's a review - when they were $300.
/edit/ The Microdrive arrived; conquest thread
Following the link to the review you mentioned, I found that Compuvest has the 5 GB version for $15.99 + shipping. That's probably not as handy for you, being in Australia, but for any interested North Americans it is probably the best thing going.
BTW, Compuvest also has the SIIG USB 2.0/Firewire/giga-enet card for $22, which is reputed to work well in Macs. One must download the RealTek 8169 drivers to get the ethernet working though. It is under their networking heading.
BTW, Compuvest also has the SIIG USB 2.0/Firewire/giga-enet card for $22, which is reputed to work well in Macs. One must download the RealTek 8169 drivers to get the ethernet working though. It is under their networking heading.
Hey Guys.
Found this thread and it's along the lines of a project I have been researching - a SCSI CF Drive. Really an External SCSI PCMCIA Drive. Hope you guys are still watching it as I can use some feedback.
PCMCIA give the added benefit of using an Adapter for any Flash format available plus the addition of Ethernet/Wi-Fi. As some may already know an actual HDD option is also available for those who require longevity of their storage medium. How Ethernet/Wi-Fi would work I have no idea, but it is a possibility since those PCMCIA Card do exist.
I have three leads so far:
Build one: http://micha.freeshell.org/pcmcia_drive/index.php. A good way to go, but would require a bulk build to keep costs down.
Or buy them: http://search.ebay.com/spyrus (eBay - search for Spyrus) and also
http://www.adtron.com/pdf/S35P-20-spec100807.pdf
The eBay unit is selling for $100 plus shipping. I did a 'Make an Offer' and bought one for $80 USD.
The Adtron Dual Slot unit (so I'm told by the sales rep who is VERY flaky) is $140 plus shipping and lead time is 6 weeks. Seems too cheap to me since I was quoted $340 for the Signal Slot unit. They also don't keep stock and built-on-demand, hence the wait times. Even still, $140 (if that price really is correct) is about as cheap as I've found with all my research for new items. eBay is the best price I've found of course, but the units are used. Seems all new units are internal which of course would require an Enclosure with a Power Supply. All Enclosures I have found are 5.25" which then require a 3.5" Converter Bracket. Anyone know of a 3.5" Enclosure with a front access bezel that would work with a device like the SCSI PCMCIA Drive please let me know! I can't find any of course. Even a good lead on a cheap SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 Enclosure would be appreciated.
One last find was SCSIForSamplers.com. They have this: http://www.scsiforsamplers.com/all_products.asp?MCDISK $125 isn't that bad, but they only have 16 units left when I spoke to the owner last. Some buyout he did a few years back and it's the only stock he has left.
So let me ask how have the SCSI CF Drives been working out for everyone?
Any complaints/suggestions/wants/needs? All input is appreciated!
I'm looking to produce or find such a unit for the Apple II Community, but if it also happens to help the Mac Community all the better.
Feel free to contact me directly.
Found this thread and it's along the lines of a project I have been researching - a SCSI CF Drive. Really an External SCSI PCMCIA Drive. Hope you guys are still watching it as I can use some feedback.
PCMCIA give the added benefit of using an Adapter for any Flash format available plus the addition of Ethernet/Wi-Fi. As some may already know an actual HDD option is also available for those who require longevity of their storage medium. How Ethernet/Wi-Fi would work I have no idea, but it is a possibility since those PCMCIA Card do exist.
I have three leads so far:
Build one: http://micha.freeshell.org/pcmcia_drive/index.php. A good way to go, but would require a bulk build to keep costs down.
Or buy them: http://search.ebay.com/spyrus (eBay - search for Spyrus) and also
http://www.adtron.com/pdf/S35P-20-spec100807.pdf
The eBay unit is selling for $100 plus shipping. I did a 'Make an Offer' and bought one for $80 USD.
The Adtron Dual Slot unit (so I'm told by the sales rep who is VERY flaky) is $140 plus shipping and lead time is 6 weeks. Seems too cheap to me since I was quoted $340 for the Signal Slot unit. They also don't keep stock and built-on-demand, hence the wait times. Even still, $140 (if that price really is correct) is about as cheap as I've found with all my research for new items. eBay is the best price I've found of course, but the units are used. Seems all new units are internal which of course would require an Enclosure with a Power Supply. All Enclosures I have found are 5.25" which then require a 3.5" Converter Bracket. Anyone know of a 3.5" Enclosure with a front access bezel that would work with a device like the SCSI PCMCIA Drive please let me know! I can't find any of course. Even a good lead on a cheap SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 Enclosure would be appreciated.
One last find was SCSIForSamplers.com. They have this: http://www.scsiforsamplers.com/all_products.asp?MCDISK $125 isn't that bad, but they only have 16 units left when I spoke to the owner last. Some buyout he did a few years back and it's the only stock he has left.
So let me ask how have the SCSI CF Drives been working out for everyone?
Any complaints/suggestions/wants/needs? All input is appreciated!
I'm looking to produce or find such a unit for the Apple II Community, but if it also happens to help the Mac Community all the better.
Feel free to contact me directly.
An INTERNAL drive would be preferred, I think. We could then use them inside SE/30s or inside external HD cases we already own, like the HD20SC housing. With an external flash drive, you have to worry about aesthetics. And while it may be possible to remove the guts from an external drive and use those guts as an internal drive mechanism, it is rather a waste for those of us who won't need the external housing.
Sorry, I've not tested other flash solutions for classic Macs in the past, so I cannot be helpful on that point. What I can say though is that it would be nice if the overall read AND write performance could at least match that of a 7200rpm SCSI drive (I fully understand the READs would be faster, but I'd also like to see wicked fast WRITEs as well). So even if the flash drive were only as fast as a normal 7200rpm spinning platter drive, you would still reap benefits from reduced heat and noise, making the flash drive a very appealing purchase for many classic Mac owners (if the price is right).
Hello JDW.
Yes, I can see how Internal would be preferred by Mac users.
As far as speed it would really depend on the type of Flash used. San Disk has some type IV CF Cards that are very quick. Probably on par with the current HDDs if you want to spend the money. In that case you might as well purchase a MicroDrive HDD or a 'real' solid state SCSI HDD. All those options would be much more then a simple piece of Flash though.
Quick update on the Adtron Drive: The 'flaky' guy (Jack Carney of Eastern Sales) has returned my email saying 'We can do a credit card for 1 pc. However I'm a bit dyslexic today. The price for the dual slot is $410 ea. not $140 ea. I apologize.' Yeah... right. If he was one of my guys he'd be fired, so fired. I also can't seem to get him to call me. I heard a lot of good things about Adtron, but this guy's a joke.
I'm really sorry to see that option disappear. Oh well. I'll probably be designing my own Drive, so any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
Yes, I can see how Internal would be preferred by Mac users.
As far as speed it would really depend on the type of Flash used. San Disk has some type IV CF Cards that are very quick. Probably on par with the current HDDs if you want to spend the money. In that case you might as well purchase a MicroDrive HDD or a 'real' solid state SCSI HDD. All those options would be much more then a simple piece of Flash though.
Quick update on the Adtron Drive: The 'flaky' guy (Jack Carney of Eastern Sales) has returned my email saying 'We can do a credit card for 1 pc. However I'm a bit dyslexic today. The price for the dual slot is $410 ea. not $140 ea. I apologize.' Yeah... right. If he was one of my guys he'd be fired, so fired. I also can't seem to get him to call me. I heard a lot of good things about Adtron, but this guy's a joke.
I'm really sorry to see that option disappear. Oh well. I'll probably be designing my own Drive, so any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
Prices come down over time, and such will drive down the cost of the IV cards sooner than we think. So money is not the issue here. I am mainly concerned that, in order to fully take advantage of all the speed those Extreme series cards offer, you would need "hardware support." So my question therefore is, can you make the hardware to take advantage of that speed? In other words, the SE/30 (or other compact Mac) would be able to take full advantage of the speed of the drive, limited only by the SCSI implementation in that given Mac, rather than being limited (in any way) by the flash hardware.
Simply put, I myself want a 100% silent, ultra-low power flash drive in about a 5GB or 8GB size, that will match or beat the speed of my current 7200rpm spinning platter hard disk. (Read speed is as important to me as write speed.) I also want it to be just as compatible with my software as any spinning platter HD would be.
If I can get that, at a reasonable cost (including the flash card), then consider me on the waiting list!
I have one Adtron single slot PCMCIA card reader in use in the lab. It works flawlessly, fast, silent, reliable. Pretty good stuff. Check our wiki pages Flash Drive Test Results and Using Flash Memory.
When purchasing the dual slot device, keep in mind that two cards in this may appear as one single drive in the scsi chain, as the device is designed to use two flash cards in striping mode for speed optimisation. The drive uses only one SCSI ID address, anyway.
The Adtron S35P has the footprint of a 3.5 inch harddisk or floppy drive. It uses only 5 V DC supply voltage (might be suitable for Laptops, but I have not verified this). You may mount the unit internally in a drive bay, accessible through a bezel with appropriate cutout or closed, or in an external drive compartment. The eject button is operated manually.
As for the pricing of the Adtron parts: those are designed to meet industrial or military specifications. Thus you can get single units on demand in spite the product is announced to have reached end of life. If you can grab a unit and you can afford it, my suggestion would be "strong buy". When you are about to pay USD 100 or more, compare to other similar devices listed in the 68kMLA Wiki.
When purchasing the dual slot device, keep in mind that two cards in this may appear as one single drive in the scsi chain, as the device is designed to use two flash cards in striping mode for speed optimisation. The drive uses only one SCSI ID address, anyway.
The Adtron S35P has the footprint of a 3.5 inch harddisk or floppy drive. It uses only 5 V DC supply voltage (might be suitable for Laptops, but I have not verified this). You may mount the unit internally in a drive bay, accessible through a bezel with appropriate cutout or closed, or in an external drive compartment. The eject button is operated manually.
As for the pricing of the Adtron parts: those are designed to meet industrial or military specifications. Thus you can get single units on demand in spite the product is announced to have reached end of life. If you can grab a unit and you can afford it, my suggestion would be "strong buy". When you are about to pay USD 100 or more, compare to other similar devices listed in the 68kMLA Wiki.
I'm not too sure I follow about 'hardware support'. As far as I understand the overall speed would be limited by the SCSI buss followed by the actual speed of the storage device, i.e. the HDD or Flash device. Again, writing times may be a bit slower right now and directly effected by price of course. But as time goes on and Flash becomes more advanced I'm sure writing access times will becomes less of a price factor.
Now I would assume a SCSI HDD would be slower in general, but only since it's mechanical. Flash being solid state and having much faster access times should be able to at least keep up with the SCSI HDDs that are currently being used even though there is a bit of translation going on with the SCSI CF Drive (SCSI-to-PCMCIA-to-IDE-to-CF for instance).
As far as compatibility, I would assume the SCSI CF Drive would be seen as a removable device, much like any ZIP Drive would. Again, I don't know much about Mac though. On the Apple II side of things it's seen as any block device is and works just the same. So if any special drivers are needed, I would only assume they would be to support the removable aspect of the SCSI CF Drive more so then the actual storage aspect, but again I have no idea when it comes to Macs and their drivers. Anyone know for sure how this would work?
Well no waiting list needed. I got my entire setup from eBay for about $125 with Drive, 256MB CF Card, Cables and PCMCIA to CF Adapter. For an idea 256MB is like 500 Gig on any modern PC.
As far as producing something custom, I have several options. Of course I would wait till the supply on eBay is gone. That seller has something in the range of 100+ units right now. So it's going to be a while I assume. Even then, I would like to fully document the speed aspect and compare it to IDE.
As far as speed, it's just as fast as my SCSI HDD that I've tested against the SCSI CF Drive. Although my DMA IDE Controller with CF Card blows the whole thing away as far as access speeds. I was a little surprised by this and need to try to find where the bottleneck is in my system. Maybe SCSI to CF isn't as fast as I had once though or this particular SCSI Drive is slower then what is actually possible.
Thanks for those links and all that info!
You might need to experiment with disk formatters to get the best disk parameters and driver (the one that the formatter puts on the disk). HD SC Setup is going to be far from optimal.
Experiment with a CF card that you can afford to throw away. Multiple reformats will reduce its life considerably.
I shall be more specific then. I defined "hardware" as "the hardware that is used to interface a given flash memory to the SCSI bus of the old Mac." I was NOT talking about Mac hardware.
Some digital cameras don't support all the speed of some cards. Why? Because they lack hardware support. In like manner, I felt that if a given flash card adapter lacks support for all the speedy features of a given card, how then could it pass along all those speed benefits to the Mac.
So my question here has nothing to do with the speed limitations of the Mac's SCSI bus.
Now have a look at the specifications of the Extreme IV card. Read and Write speeds of 45MB/second?!?!? That should blow away even a fast SCSI spinning platter disk for both reads and writes on any SE/30. But if you connect it up and if it doesn't blow away a spinning platter 7200rpm or even a 10krpm drive, why not? Is it not because the adapter used to connect the CF card doesn't support all the speed of the card? If the adapter does support the speed, then you should feel a difference in speed between the flash drive and a super fast spinning platter disk -- in other words, the flash disk should be faster, much faster, in both reading and writing.
I can confirm that "Microtech PCD 47B" and SanDisk Ultra II 4GB CompactFlash card is working nicely in Q650. I couldn't try it in my SE/30's cause both of them require a recap. It should work in SE/30 as well.
Microtech PCD 47B is an internal unit with PCMCIA Type I/II/III, CompactFlash and SmartMedia slots. However, CF card in a PCMCIA module did not work. The converter module I used was very cheap stuff so with another module it could work.
Formatting the CF card was troublesome. Since the card comes in DOS format it must be re formatted to HFS. Mounting was very difficult. Apple HD Setup (patched) and Drive Setup couldn't mount. Mt. Everything mounted it but it couldn't been formatted by system. Lido7 mounted and formatted the card but after start up the card didn't mount so the driver installed by Lido7 was no good. Hard Disk Toolkit did all the tricks and now I can boot from CF card. Although after Lido7 format I had to reformat the card in a PC to FAT32. Because HDT was not able to change the driver.
SanDisk Ultra II has speed of 15 MB/s. The speed is more than enough cause SCSI-2 bus in Q650 is only 10MB/s. That's why people who been able to use CF cards in their macs do not see any speed increase. The bootleneck is the SCSI-2 bus speed.
I also installed Artmix's CF2SCSI 2.5" adapter in my PB 550C but I'll report that in the PB section
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It's great to hear about all the success with Flash drives in this thread. It would rock my little world if you guys would be so kind as to add your results - both successful and otherwise - to the Flash Drive Test Results wiki chart.
My experience is that flash memory cards work very well in vintage machines when formatted using a recent version of Apple's Disk Utility. Up to the latest Tiger version it provides an option to format drives in the "Mac OS Standard" format (HFS). If you have acess to recent Mac hardware, try to work around troublesome outdated drivers by using Disk Utility. This will make sure to leave the memory usable in recent computers, as well. It also might be most useful if you want to transfer files from one machine to another.
The drive specific data used for speed optimisation in disk formatter software provides information about physical features of the drive, like the number of platters, number of cylinders per platter, specifics of the head actuating mechanism, probably read/write caching methods. This may affect access times when used in a device with moving [edit: replace "using"] parts, i.e. an actual harddisk drive. I do not believe it will make that much of a difference when using solid state storage devices. Fragmentation of data also should be no speed throttle any more with flash memory. If someone has a better knowledge of this subject, please fill in some explanatory words
SE/30, thank you for the insights on how to format the cards. I was curious on that point.
As to your comments on speed, you mention that the card is "more than enough" for the Mac you used it on, and then you also cite a theoretical speed of the Extreme II card. However, this is not the same as a detailed comparison between an Extreme-series flash card in a Mac and a fast SCSI (7200rpm & 10krpm) spinning platter hard drive in that same Macintosh.
Theoretical card speeds and Mac SCSI bus interface discussions are one thing, but real world direct comparisons are another. For what will "satisfy" one Mac user in terms of speed may not satisfy another. This is especially true when some of us are using some very fast SCSI disks in our old Macs. And if we then buy another hard drive technology, in hopes of obtaining yet higher performance, only to find that new expensive technology is actually slower in many respects, then the disappointment sets in. I know full well that some of you out there are willing to sacrifice some speed for silence and heat elimination. But I personally am not. As the old Queen song goes: "I want it all... and I want it now." :b&w:
As to your comments on speed, you mention that the card is "more than enough" for the Mac you used it on, and then you also cite a theoretical speed of the Extreme II card. However, this is not the same as a detailed comparison between an Extreme-series flash card in a Mac and a fast SCSI (7200rpm & 10krpm) spinning platter hard drive in that same Macintosh.
Theoretical card speeds and Mac SCSI bus interface discussions are one thing, but real world direct comparisons are another. For what will "satisfy" one Mac user in terms of speed may not satisfy another. This is especially true when some of us are using some very fast SCSI disks in our old Macs. And if we then buy another hard drive technology, in hopes of obtaining yet higher performance, only to find that new expensive technology is actually slower in many respects, then the disappointment sets in. I know full well that some of you out there are willing to sacrifice some speed for silence and heat elimination. But I personally am not. As the old Queen song goes: "I want it all... and I want it now." :b&w:
Hello Guys.
Now I don't know what Mac you would want to use the SCSI PCMCIA Drive in, but chances are it's going to be able to keep up with all but the more modern Macs with (if they even had) SCSI-3. Then of course the major benefit is ability to use almost any storage medium with the right Adapter in the PCMCIA Drive.
Without actual testing we're just speculating of course, but I really can't see a native SCSI device being any quicker then the SCSI PCMCIA Drive UNLESS you were to purchase a SCSI Flash HDD which are just now being sold. Even then, with the older Macs I don't see any major gain in the access times even though the SCSI Flash HDD would be in the order of 8-10 times more expensive then any SCSI PCMCIA Drive available to us today.
PS - I purchased an entire 256MB setup for about $125 delivered. Something like 4GB would have only been about $40 more, but I would never have used it on my Apple II.
Not to beleaguer a point, but if you mean a Low Level format, then I can kind of see your point. A High Level format would only write some markers and structure info though. Either way it's not really going to reduce the cards' life span by that much unless Macs do something that I'm unaware of when formatting a volume? Low Level would be the worst thing I can think of and that only writes to each sector once and then reads to verify it. Or that's how I understand it at least. Anyone else have some addition/correction?
Well the CF Card may be able to hit a certain speed, but I don't believe an SE/30 could keep up. I don't know any technical info on the SE/30, but if it has SCSI-2 then the max it could be is something like 10MB/s according to Wiki. So even if the CF Card hits 45MB/s and the SCSI PCMCIA Drive has no overhead then the bottleneck would be at the SCSI Buss of the Mac and limited to 10MB/s at the most. Probably more like 6-8MB/s with system overhead - max. So if anything most all CF Cards would be just as fast, if not just slightly faster, then any SCSI HDD in the SE/30. Newer Macs it may matter in although I had read somewhere that they had switched from SCSI years ago.
Now I don't know what Mac you would want to use the SCSI PCMCIA Drive in, but chances are it's going to be able to keep up with all but the more modern Macs with (if they even had) SCSI-3. Then of course the major benefit is ability to use almost any storage medium with the right Adapter in the PCMCIA Drive.
I would also assume it would be just fine in the SE/30. Do you know what speed/type SCSI is in the Q650? I took a quick search and couldn't find any info on that one.
Yes, you are correct about fragmentation not being an issue with Flash. Since Flash is a form of RAM/ROM (depending on how you want to look at it), there's only addresses and I/Os for data - not tracks and sectors which require heads to find and read them. In this case the Flash device would have a MicroContoller of some sort that would translate track/sector requests to memory addresses, among other things. So it's much like comparing ROM to Floppy. And when's the last time you defragged a ROM? ;-)The drive specific data used for speed optimisation in disk formatter software provides information about physical features of the drive, like the number of platters, number of cylinders per platter, specifics of the head actuating mechanism, probably read/write caching methods. This may affect access times when used in a device with using parts, i.e. an actual harddisk drive. I do not believe it will make that much of a difference when using solid state storage devices. Fragmentation of data also should be no speed throttle any more with flash memory. If someone has a better knowledge of this subject, please fill in some explanatory words
Very true. The only 'real' test would be a piece of software, like Norton's Disk Doctor or SpinRite, that would be able to determine read/write/track speeds. Track however would all be the same for Flash - next to nothing. Read and Write would mainly depend on how efficient the SCSI to PCMCIA conversion was in the SCSI PCMCIA Drive and how large the test file was. I really can't see to many different ways to convert SCSI to PCMCIA to Flash so I would assume all SCSI Flash Drives would have about the same times using the same test medium - i.e. - CF, SD, etc. The only advantage a SCSI HDD would have is the fact that there wouldn't be any delay due to protocol conversion, although this probably would be negated due to the almost instant access times of Flash.
Without actual testing we're just speculating of course, but I really can't see a native SCSI device being any quicker then the SCSI PCMCIA Drive UNLESS you were to purchase a SCSI Flash HDD which are just now being sold. Even then, with the older Macs I don't see any major gain in the access times even though the SCSI Flash HDD would be in the order of 8-10 times more expensive then any SCSI PCMCIA Drive available to us today.
PS - I purchased an entire 256MB setup for about $125 delivered. Something like 4GB would have only been about $40 more, but I would never have used it on my Apple II.
This is a theoretical assumption that parallels what Manabu Sakai tried to tell me in order to promote his flash drive solution. But in the end, even Manabu said that I would be "disappointed with performance relative to a stock hard drive." Certainly, that makes no logical or theoretical sense at all to me, as a modern 10krpm hard drive should easily overload the SE/30's 1.5MB/sec SCSI-I bus. But the fact is that Manabu was illustrating a very important point: regardless of the theory, a 7200rpm or 10k rpm fast spinning platter drive "feels fast" when you use it. And then when you drop a flash drive in, that flash drive "feels slower in comparison." None of the theory holds water at that point. I matters little of the "theory is right or wrong on the SE/30." Speed is all that matters here (for both reads and writes).
You are considering scientific testing here, of course. And there is nothing wrong with that. But I prefer real world testing that centers on "normal use." How fast does the Mac cold boot? How fast can I load Photoshop (and yes, I can do that even on an SE/30). How fast can I write big files and small files to the drive. How fast can I copy off those same files (in the Finder)? What is the performance like for CD-ROM games or educational software where I have copied the entire contents of the CD to disk and launched it from disk?
These are real world tests and they will show us quite clearly which drive is faster in terms of reading and writing.
I just wanted to chime in and say I've had nothing but success with the Acard adaptors. I've been using a few of them with some generic cheapo IDE-CF adaptors from Hong Kong with great success. My 8500 has been running 8.6 off of a 4gb card and I've got a Color Classic happily running 7.5.5 off of a 1gb card. For me, the trick was to steer clear of Apple's Drive Setup / Disk Utility. I have a version of Hard Disk Toolkit PE that came on some Power Computing CD that works just fine. Once I used that to put drivers on and initialize the CF cards, things went quite smoothly.
Subsequently, I've swapped between any number of on and off brand CF cards and have yet to find one that doesn't work. Some of them are slower than others, but they all work. The 8500 has been running nonstop doing non disk intensive tasks for more than a year, and the lifecycle hasn't been an issue yet - its card works just fine without any read / write errors.
Subsequently, I've swapped between any number of on and off brand CF cards and have yet to find one that doesn't work. Some of them are slower than others, but they all work. The 8500 has been running nonstop doing non disk intensive tasks for more than a year, and the lifecycle hasn't been an issue yet - its card works just fine without any read / write errors.
I am a HUGE fan of Acard SCSI-IDE adapters. They have a number of different types - in my SE/30, I'm using the 50 pin kind which mounts underneath a 3.5" 750 gig IDE drive since the SE/30 can take full-height 3.5" drives.
In one of my Quadra 605s, I use a 50 pin to IDE which is in the space of the floppy drive with cables run across. In another Quadra 605 built into a 1U case, I use a 68 pin to IDE which mounts on the back of the drive.
In my SGI Indy, which can only fit a standard 3.5" 50 pin drive with no space for something behind the drive, I am using a neat enclosure / adapter which takes a SATA 2.5" hard drive and fits perfectly. If I were doing another Quadra 605, I'd probably use this since it obviously takes a lot less power than a typical 3.5" drive.
With regards to CompactFlash to IDE adapters, be careful - most, unless they specifically state otherwise, WON'T work with cards larger than 2 gigs. I have three different kinds of adapters, and they all work with any card I can find which is 2 gigs or less, but none will work with 4 gig or larger of any kind.
They come in handy for things like booting NetBSD where the primary drives are on an add-in card which doesn't have direct boot support. One of my Amigas boots off of an 8 meg card, then mounts the primary drives off of the SCSI bus since it's much faster than the IDE bus. On my PowerMac 9600 NetBSD machine, it boots NetBSD from the motherboard SCSI bus (via an Acard IDE-SCSI adapter), and the kernel's root filesystem is set to drives on an ATTO SCSI bus.
It's nice to be able to put new, modern drives in machines of any age, especially since most newer drives take less power and make less noise.
I hope this helps!
In one of my Quadra 605s, I use a 50 pin to IDE which is in the space of the floppy drive with cables run across. In another Quadra 605 built into a 1U case, I use a 68 pin to IDE which mounts on the back of the drive.
In my SGI Indy, which can only fit a standard 3.5" 50 pin drive with no space for something behind the drive, I am using a neat enclosure / adapter which takes a SATA 2.5" hard drive and fits perfectly. If I were doing another Quadra 605, I'd probably use this since it obviously takes a lot less power than a typical 3.5" drive.
With regards to CompactFlash to IDE adapters, be careful - most, unless they specifically state otherwise, WON'T work with cards larger than 2 gigs. I have three different kinds of adapters, and they all work with any card I can find which is 2 gigs or less, but none will work with 4 gig or larger of any kind.
They come in handy for things like booting NetBSD where the primary drives are on an add-in card which doesn't have direct boot support. One of my Amigas boots off of an 8 meg card, then mounts the primary drives off of the SCSI bus since it's much faster than the IDE bus. On my PowerMac 9600 NetBSD machine, it boots NetBSD from the motherboard SCSI bus (via an Acard IDE-SCSI adapter), and the kernel's root filesystem is set to drives on an ATTO SCSI bus.
It's nice to be able to put new, modern drives in machines of any age, especially since most newer drives take less power and make less noise.
I hope this helps!
Lots of talk about adapters, but how "fast" are these solutions? (See my previous posts in this thread to understand what I mean here.)
Speed? The speed of IDE-SCSI adapters is excellent. You're basically taking the speed advantages of modern IDE drives and adding to them the advantages of SCSI DMA (on NetBSD DMA-supporting cards, that is). Parts of disk benchmarking on an 80 MB/sec ATTO card in a 9600 show 60 MB/sec from a 500 gig drive, and in excess of 70 MB/sec from a hardware mirroring SATA enclosure with two 1 terabyte drives and an Acard SATA-SCSI adapter.
The speed of CompactFlash to IDE adapters is pretty modest in my opinion. On a fast machine (not an '030), a typical newer CF card will do between 5 and 10 megabytes a second. I don't use them for much more than booting, but I suppose if I wanted to add a drive with no moving parts to an older machine with a modest SCSI bus, that'd be one way to go.
The speed of CompactFlash to IDE adapters is pretty modest in my opinion. On a fast machine (not an '030), a typical newer CF card will do between 5 and 10 megabytes a second. I don't use them for much more than booting, but I suppose if I wanted to add a drive with no moving parts to an older machine with a modest SCSI bus, that'd be one way to go.
I myself am mainly considering use in a 030 compact Mac (as described in my previous posts). And as I mentioned previously, I am eager to see some "real world" speed comparisons on a compact Mac, with a flash solution pitted against a fast 7200rpm (or even 10krpm) SCSI drive.
Well, I can run a comparison of a 2 gig card against a fast SCSI drive. I have a feeling, though, that since both the card and the drive will be significantly faster than the SCSI bus, there won't be much to report!
I'll post something tomorrow.
I'll post something tomorrow.
Subjectively, the CF cards are slow for disk access. I especially notice this in the 8500. Two things seem to happen - first, the CF cards exhibit a bursting phenomenon, where in an extended write operation, the CF card will need a few seconds to pause, presumably finish writing what it has been sent, and later resume receiving new data. Second, actual file copying takes quite a while longer, I'd say on the order of 1.5x to 2x, but I don't have a quasi-fast 50 pin drive against which to accurately benchmark. I know that the Color Classic runs about as fast as it did when it had some olde Apple romed 40mb clunker in it, but that's setting the bar pretty low. But I've noticed a significant increase in booting time on the 8500.
So johnklos, to confirm this you have tried using the Acard 7720u? and that will not support any compact flash card over 2GB in your Q605? I had planned to do something similar using a fast 300X 16 or 32GB compact flash card. I want it to be fast so I can take this out and put it on a modern machine and copy files to and from at full speed.
I'm not really worried about the lifespan of the card as long as it is SLC and not MLC based like the cheaper ones are. Hopefully when cheaper it would be nice to use one of the new intel SSD where the random write speed is no longer a problem like on current models avg 5-8MB/sec. But with the slow SCSI1 we shouldn't have to worry too much about that. It would be nice to have a detailed test that compares compact flash, SSD, and SCSI HD performance.
Yes, I can confirm that I've used CompactFlash to IDE adapters with the Acard 7720u. However, the 2 gig limit was a limit caused by my CompactFlash to IDE adapter, not the Acard. I have various Acards which work with IDE devices up to 1.5 terabytes (via a 1.5 TB SATA drive and a SATA to IDE adapter).
My warning was just that you should make sure you get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter which explicitly says that it supports cards larger than 2 gigs, else you MIGHT get an adapter which is limited.
I have not yet been able to format a drive so that it boots my SE/30 properly. It gives me the black unhappy Mac screen almost immediately. Booting from the Apple Network Access floppy lets me mount network volumes and run programs, so I know the hardware is good. I just need to find a proper disk formatter. Any suggestions, anyone?
My warning was just that you should make sure you get a CompactFlash to IDE adapter which explicitly says that it supports cards larger than 2 gigs, else you MIGHT get an adapter which is limited.
I have not yet been able to format a drive so that it boots my SE/30 properly. It gives me the black unhappy Mac screen almost immediately. Booting from the Apple Network Access floppy lets me mount network volumes and run programs, so I know the hardware is good. I just need to find a proper disk formatter. Any suggestions, anyone?
Here is the IDE to compact flash adapter that I planned on using the startech CF2X2IDE25 which would allow 2 compact flash drives on a single board and still use the the acard 7720U.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A2125370&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=30322&lid=680414
And then add in SoftRaid 2.x, and see if this would work for a mirror, or if speed would be increased at all in a raid 0, I'm guessing it wouldn't make a difference since its already flash but a mirror would be interesting.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A2125370&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=30322&lid=680414
And then add in SoftRaid 2.x, and see if this would work for a mirror, or if speed would be increased at all in a raid 0, I'm guessing it wouldn't make a difference since its already flash but a mirror would be interesting.
It's highly unlikely you will see two drives at all using that setup. I've read elsewhere that the dual head CF adapters show up as a single drive on Macs. And that's Macs with native IDE - the Acard 7220 will definitely only convert a single drive. I don't know whether that means you'll get a single volume the size of both cards, or only one card's worth.
Lido
Yeah, the slave card / drive typically doesn't show up at all, at least in my experience (seems to depend on the IDE-CF adaptor's mood). I have one adaptor that will consistently show the card attached as slave, but nothing I do will make it boot from it (startup disk, blessing / reblessing system folder, different system versions, different cards, etc.). That said, I've found that the build quality on the two card adaptors seems to be a little bit higher than the single card adaptors - I bought a pack of three single card adaptors and had components actually fall off the board on one of them! Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback guys, that was not as encouraging as I had hoped for but its nice to know before I fork over the cash for this setup.
http://www.addonics.com/products/io/ide_scsi.asp (discontinued, check ebay or google for the part number ADAEC7726H)
then
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp (quite cheap)
maybe?? Still need a 68 to 50 converter, but those seem to be rather common.
:-/
then
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp (quite cheap)
maybe?? Still need a 68 to 50 converter, but those seem to be rather common.
:-/
I too have an ACARD AEC-7720U that runs flawlessly in my SE/30 or IIsi with a 3.5" 20GB IBM 7200 RPM drive or a 2.5" 9GB IBM 5400 RPM laptop drive with an IDE converter. I'd be interested to see if anyone has tried one of these Transcend IDE flash modules with the AEC SCSI-to-IDE card. Buy.com seems to have the best price on the Transcend modules.