philscomputerlab
Experienced Member
I thought this review of a SD card to IDE adapter is most suitable for early Pentium machines.
Here is the gist: Prices of these adapters have come down, I got this one for 10 Australian dollars shipped from eBay. The adapter supports DMA and I had no problem with a 386, Pentium III and Core 2 auto detecting SD cards. On the 386 I had to use EZ-Drive to break the 500 MB limit, but this is normal.
The adapter maxes out at around 25 MB/s transfer rate, which is plenty of speed. Access time is basically zero and the SD cards I used do very well with reading and writing small files. ATTO and Crystal Disk benchmarks are in the video.
I had some issues with running a second device on the same IDE channel, but on the 386 this worked fine. The adapter doesn't have a master / slave jumper, so that is likely the reason.
At least were I live, SD cards are readily available at the super market or post office, whereas CF cards have to be ordered in. Prices also seem lower with SD cards, this is likely just a numbers game.
I used this adapter in 4 machines all up and haven't had a single issue. I can also recommend using it for Windows because of the excellent small file performance.
Here is the full video review:
Here is the gist: Prices of these adapters have come down, I got this one for 10 Australian dollars shipped from eBay. The adapter supports DMA and I had no problem with a 386, Pentium III and Core 2 auto detecting SD cards. On the 386 I had to use EZ-Drive to break the 500 MB limit, but this is normal.
The adapter maxes out at around 25 MB/s transfer rate, which is plenty of speed. Access time is basically zero and the SD cards I used do very well with reading and writing small files. ATTO and Crystal Disk benchmarks are in the video.
I had some issues with running a second device on the same IDE channel, but on the 386 this worked fine. The adapter doesn't have a master / slave jumper, so that is likely the reason.
At least were I live, SD cards are readily available at the super market or post office, whereas CF cards have to be ordered in. Prices also seem lower with SD cards, this is likely just a numbers game.
I used this adapter in 4 machines all up and haven't had a single issue. I can also recommend using it for Windows because of the excellent small file performance.
Here is the full video review: