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CFFA3000 - fantastic!

RWallmow said:
I have one of the older CFFA units (like 2006ish run) and I LOVE it in my IIgs. Rich has been an awesome resource to the Apple II community in making these cards.

I am now planning on 2x of the CFFA3000's for my //e and ][+. Disks and disk drives are getting to be problematic to maintain on those systems. With the CFFA's I know all my old Apples will have readable working media in ANOTHER 25 years.
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That's the real beauty of the CFFA3000 to me, being able to mount disk images on the Apple II series so that I don't have to rely on real disks that might fail for some reason. The real disks are nice to use but it's also nice to not have to worry about them. Mine is currently mounted in my ROM 01 GS.
 
Too bad it doesn't have DMA support like the card made by Joachim Lange in Germany... (jus sayin)
 
gerrydoire said:
Too bad it doesn't have DMA support like the card made by Joachim Lange in Germany... (jus sayin)
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Hi,

As a relatively new arrival into the Apple II arena, I wonder what you mean by that statement? What advantage is there to having DMA capability? What is the disadvantage to not having it?

Also, what is the card made by Joachim Lange in Germany? Is it actually available? I tried pretty hard to find vendors of accessories for the Apple II, and I came up pretty dry.

Thanks, in advance, for you patience and reply.

smp
 
smp said:
As a relatively new arrival into the Apple II arena, I wonder what you mean by that statement? What advantage is there to having DMA capability? What is the disadvantage to not having it?
smp
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Mostly transfer speed. The CFFA3000 is thoroughly beaten by the RamFAST SCSI card on the performance front due to caching and DMA. There is a firmware update that will add caching to the card. DMA was planned for in the design, but not implemented yet (if ever).

One reason to NOT use DMA is that it raises compatibility issues. For example, any RAM over 4MB in the IIgs RAM Slot is not DMA compatible. Some accelerator cards may have issues with DMA transfers as well (plug in chips for the 8-bits machines are not compatible at all).
 
Thanks very much for the reply, njroadfan.

I suppose I should have surmised the transfer speed fact on my own (Doh! It's DMA, dummy!). Since I have had mixed results acquiring vintage stuff on eBay and elsewhere, I am very happy to have this bit of solid state storage, and not having to worry if the card or drive or whatever I am acquiring will actually work at all when I receive it. And, as solid state memory, the CFFA card is already working considerably faster than my 5.25 and 3.5 inch diskette drives, so I'll take what I have and be happy with it.

Thanks also for the tip on the potential compatibility issues with using DMA. I greatly appreciate all the esoteric tips I can collect!

smp
 
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Check out ebay item: 251152708185

Thats a card that uses DMA, be interesting to compare it to the CFFA3000
 
That eBay auction was for an earlier version of the MicroDrive from what I can tell from the photo.

My testing is that the MicroDrive Turbo is faster at loading GSOS (ProDOS 6.0.1) from a CF card than is the CFFA3K card. I have both in my IIGS, and used the same CF card in both for my test. I didn't have any high-tech chronometer to use, just a regular digital handheld timer. I forget the actual numbers, as I was only doing it to see which card I would be using to boot my IIGS. [I'm a fan of CF cards vs USB thumbdrives, as some of you know:) from other discussions.] After the election next month, I should have a bit more free time & will try to redo my tests & report the numbers.

As they say on TV, "Your mileage may vary."
 
gerrydoire said:
Any other differences besides the speed?
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Yes, as others here have noted, you can use disk images of DOS 3.3 software without the need to unarchive the image to physical media, which is a godsend! The card is, in my opinion, a great device for a IIGS in that you can leave a CF card loaded with your software & data files, boot directly off the CF card much faster than off physical disks, add a USB extension cable and leave the IIGS case closed and use the thumbdrive via the extension cable to move files and, what I suspect most folks are really doing whether or not they will admit it, play those old DOS games direct from archive file. Very neat!

I hope my earlier comment about the MicroDrive Turbo loading GSOS faster than the CFFA3K card from CF to mean that the CFFA3K card is slow. Not by any means. And if you're used to loading GSOS from physical disk - such as a hard drive - you will be pleased with the speed it loads from a CF card. Again, not being a big fan of USB thumbdrives, I haven't tried loading GSOS from a thumbdrive. Wondering if anyone has tried it yet, or is everyone busy with DOS games? :)
 
gerrydoire said:
Any other differences besides the speed?
Click to expand...

Yes, as others here have noted, you can use disk images of DOS 3.3 software without the need to unarchive the image to physical media, which is a godsend! The card is, in my opinion, a great device for a IIGS in that you can leave a CF card loaded with your software & data files, boot directly off the CF card much faster than off physical disks, add a USB extension cable and leave the IIGS case closed and use the thumbdrive via the extension cable to move files and, what I suspect most folks are really doing whether or not they will admit it, play those old DOS games direct from archive file. Very neat!

I hope my earlier comment about the MicroDrive Turbo loading GSOS faster than the CFFA3K card from CF to mean that the CFFA3K card is slow. Not by any means. And if you're used to loading GSOS from physical disk - such as a hard drive - you will be pleased with the speed it loads from a CF card. Again, not being a big fan of USB thumbdrives, I haven't tried loading GSOS from a thumbdrive. Wondering if anyone has tried it yet, or is everyone busy with DOS games? :)
 
Yes, as others here have noted, you can use disk images of DOS 3.3 software without the need to unarchive the image to physical media, which is a godsend! The card is, in my opinion, a great device for a IIGS in that you can leave a CF card loaded with your software & data files, boot directly off the CF card much faster than off physical disks, add a USB extension cable and leave the IIGS case closed and use the thumbdrive via the extension cable to move files and, what I suspect most folks are really doing whether or not they will admit it, play those old DOS games direct from archive file. Very neat!

I hope my earlier comment about the MicroDrive Turbo loading GSOS faster than the CFFA3K card from CF to mean that the CFFA3K card is slow. Not by any means. And if you're used to loading GSOS from physical disk - such as a hard drive - you will be pleased with the speed it loads from a CF card. Again, not being a big fan of USB thumbdrives, I haven't tried loading GSOS from a thumbdrive. Wondering if anyone has tried it yet, or is everyone busy with DOS games? :)
 
I now have one of these CFFA3000 cards in my possession. I had an exploratory try out last night. So far, so good!
 
Drken said:
Yes, as others here have noted, you can use disk images of DOS 3.3 software without the need to unarchive the image to physical media, which is a godsend! The card is, in my opinion, a great device for a IIGS in that you can leave a CF card loaded with your software & data files, boot directly off the CF card much faster than off physical disks, add a USB extension cable and leave the IIGS case closed and use the thumbdrive via the extension cable to move files and, what I suspect most folks are really doing whether or not they will admit it, play those old DOS games direct from archive file. Very neat!

I hope my earlier comment about the MicroDrive Turbo loading GSOS faster than the CFFA3K card from CF to mean that the CFFA3K card is slow. Not by any means. And if you're used to loading GSOS from physical disk - such as a hard drive - you will be pleased with the speed it loads from a CF card. Again, not being a big fan of USB thumbdrives, I haven't tried loading GSOS from a thumbdrive. Wondering if anyone has tried it yet, or is everyone busy with DOS games? :)
Click to expand...

As I've noted before on other forums I mount a 32MB hard drive image from a flash drive and boot into GS/OS and it is much faster than booting GS/OS from a 3.5 disk. I think that the CFFA3K is one of the best cards for the Apple II community. I'll eventually get a CF card to add to it, so I can update the firmware. That is one feature I'd like to see changed, the ability to update the firmware on the CFFA3K from a flash drive plugged into the USB port. I've got an extension cable plugged into the USB port on the CFFA3K so I don't have to open up my GS to add or delete disk images on the flash drive. The one other thing I'm looking forward to, with a firmware update, is the ability to put the disk images in folders so that we can have more than 256 files available to the Apple II via the CFFA3K.
 
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