Newb with a question

[hargle]

But keep in mind that each sector on a CF card has a finite number of writes to it, and you could approach that point much quicker than you think. An SSD drive has built in algorithms to stop this from happening, it spreads the writes over the space evenly so you don't pummel a single sector to death, but rather use them all uniformly, this makes the death of an SSD drive extremely predictable, but inversely the death of a CF card is hard to predict.

So a CF drive is good for light use, especially in a DOS system, but I would not try to run something like Win9x on it. Eventually I intend to put a 512Mb CF card into my 5160.

too true, too true.
At a minimum, use a write-back disk cache on any CF device if you are going to be doing a lot of heavy writing. This is why I'm using normal hard drives in my machines and using CF devices as a means of external access to bulk transfers.

 

[Minerva10210]

I am actually looking into IDE --> SDCard converters instead of the CF. Mainly due to the fact that I don't have any CF cards or readers, but I do have for SD cards, and I have about 50x 64MB SDCards form work that i can use!

Can't wait for my XTIDE cards to arrive

 

[wrljet]

Can you boot from these adapters?

I have an IDE->SD adapter and it works as a disk but won't boot.

Yes, those adapters will work with any IDE controller provided they can detect them, or you can work out the parameters, and that you aren't crossing any of the barriers of 512Mb, 8Gb etc. And they will boost your speed regardless of the machine architecture since your latency is dropped substantially.

But keep in mind that each sector on a CF card has a finite number of writes to it, and you could approach that point much quicker than you think. An SSD drive has built in algorithms to stop this from happening, it spreads the writes over the space evenly so you don't pummel a single sector to death, but rather use them all uniformly, this makes the death of an SSD drive extremely predictable, but inversely the death of a CF card is hard to predict.

So a CF drive is good for light use, especially in a DOS system, but I would not try to run something like Win9x on it. Eventually I intend to put a 512Mb CF card into my 5160.

 

[Floppies_only]

But keep in mind that each sector on a CF card has a finite number of writes to it, and you could approach that point much quicker than you think.

I read on this website:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

that the memory cells are rated in the many, many thousands of erase/write cycles. It seems to me that you could back up your CF drive to floppies and just buy a new one for $14.95 every couple of years. The author of that website also said that the CF drives are designed to map out cells that go bad and stop using them.

Sean

 

[Floppies_only]

I am actually looking into IDE --> SDCard converters instead of the CF. Mainly due to the fact that I don't have any CF cards or readers, but I do have for SD cards, and I have about 50x 64MB SDCards form work that i can use!

Can't wait for my XTIDE cards to arrive

This one on ebay: 220544205114 says it's 50 pin IDE. I thought IDE cables plugged into 40 pin connectors. Did something change?

Sean