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New CF Microdrives - Seagate 5gb - $5.69 ea shipped

Man I missed these ones. That's what I get for waiting. Do these drives work good in a 486?
 
They'll work well in whatever you put them in so long as it supports IDE - they're IDE-specced 3400rpm hard drives in a CF form factor.
 
BTW, These seagate microdrives are back up for sale again, for anyone wanting one, now @ 5.99 though... And yes Druid, Worldwide shipping is included free ;)

With the XT-IDE project now most likely using CF and these being useful on most ide machines, Good time to stock up while they are cheap! :D

Viva La Microdrives! :D
 
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I'm not seeing the seagate models either. I do see those cheap 4GB units though from the US in the USB job, I guess that's sorta cool as you could use them in two systems (consider it a USB->IDE converter + drive). Still confused though, the seagate microdrives, those are IDE and then intenrally it's CF or are they a CF ZIF type of unit for use in a CF port that has that pin connector?
 
The Microdrives, whether Hitachi or Seagate, have CF pinouts. CF is in and of itself an IDE spec, at least the way that I understand it. If you need a good, detailed picture of a microdrive, google the ipod mini's - they used them quite famously (and they're where I got mine, as I long ago swapped 16gb CF flash cards into my iPod mini's when I replaced their batteries).
 
I think you may have spoken too soon; Newegg a few months ago was dumping microdrives with IDE ZIF interface. Something to watch out for when you see microdrive being advertised.
 
I bought one of the gs-magic drives as an experiment in addition to the known Seagates. I'm a bit leery of the brand as I don't know it and can't find a company website.
 
GS Magicstor was a big company till a few years ago. If my memory serves me correctly , Hitachi sued them into oblivion due to GS Magicstor violating Hitachi patents... This was during the time Apple was using microdrives in ipods. Apple started to use them, and Hitachi caught wind and started lawsuits pronto. For apple to use them, they have to be somewhat reliable. They are better then a hitachi drive, almost as good as a seagate reliability wise, and a little faster to boot. The downside is, they are a tad bigger and wont fit in most CF devices based on CFII. And they take more power as well (think 40-50ma vs 30ma), plus dont take as kindly to a drop... ( try dropping a laptop/desktop drive on the floor, these are 10x if not more likely to survive such a fall...)

On the other hand, the usb enclosure models seem to be true ata-ide drives. So its kinda a tossup between these and seagates tbh. My money be on the seagate lasting longer, but not by much. Either way tons of thin clients among other devices take microdrives. I know of a few that been running over 5 years now without a drive replacement! ( wyse terminals ), although those are older revision drives. From what I understand these higher capacity drives are built even better then the 1-2gb generation. :D

I even use an IBM 340mb microdrive in my xt 5162. ^_^ I love microdrives... feel free to ask any more questions, if I can help, more then happy too :D

This weekend I will be converting my dell 486 to a 586 133 w/ a 64 mb isa ide raid controller. I am going to try 1-2-4 drive configs and see what numbers I pull and go from there. Most likely I will post a thread showing results of 2 GS magicstors vs 2 Seagates as well. I even have a 2nd caching controller that supports 64mb as well, so I might even bench them against one another, who knows! One is a CSC Fastcache64 Isa, other is a Buslogic 510a. :)

Funny thing is, the Fastcache claims in the manual it works in an XT (8 bit slot) . I'll have to try that some day...
 
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I think GS also made an 8GB drive, but I've not seen any offered for sale.

My experience with both the Fastcache 32 and Fastcache 64 was mixed. Buggy drivers, mostly. I eventually got rid of both in favor with more standard Adaptec gear. I think Martin designed them to sell the glut of SCSI drives he was accumulating.
 
My 2 USB drives came in, Qrisma 4GB. Average seed is 6.0MB/sec (4.1MB/sec low, 7.2MB/sec high) using HD Tune 2.55.
 
Have you taken them apart yet (or were you going to?). Are they the same technology?
 
I picked up a few with fleaBay bucks. The seller indicated the drives are relatively unprotected (no hard shell outside) but are otherwise mechanically CF compatible drives.
 
If I knew how to take the case apart to see the internal HD I would (cases are kind of nice and I don't want to damage them).
 
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