Thread
Compact Flash in se/30
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.