SATA to CF Card adapter - MorphOS

[stevee617]

I was at Fry's Electronic store buying some "stuff" and I came across this:



Best Connectivity
SATA II to Compact Flash Adapter
Marvell 88SA8052 Chipset

On the reverse it says:

Features and Specifications

Supports  SATA II (1.5Gbps and 3.0 Gpbs) host interface
Support SATA hot swap
Supports Compact Flask Type I & II and Micro-drive form factors

Well, it was inexpensive ($14), so, why not?

I plugged it in to my PowerMac G5, 2.0 Ghz machine and placed a grossly undersized 512MB CF card in the slot and....MOS recognized it. I do need to point out that my MorphOS machine has been down due to a dead battery and no hard disk drive. I added the CF card adapter and booted the live CD.

I'm going to get a new battery and larger capacity CF card and see how this plays out. I haven't found anything on the internet addressing a CF card drive in a PM G5. I've seen it used on older Macs, Amigas, etc...

If anyone has tried this please add to this thread.

Keep in mind this is an experiment. I'm doing this because this piece of hardware "just happened to catch my eye"

[stevee617]

SUCCESS!!!

I purchased a new battery and 32GB CF card for this project.

I used the included bracket with the card to mount the card on the backplane. This allows for easy access to the CF card without having to remove the side panel. This particular card uses a floppy drive power connector. I used a Y-splitter with floppy power connector. Power comes from the optical drive.

I decided to do an install of Mac OS X. I formatted the card using Apple's Disk Utility program and formatted the card Mac OS Extended. I installed 10.4.11 on the card. This was the fastest OS X install I have ever encountered.

Once installed, I re-booted the Mac. I was shocked at the new found speed of this G5. It loaded so fast, the Mac OS splash screen and progress bar never appeared on the screen!

Once I was satisfied with the operation, I inserted MorphOS 3.9 and rebooted the computer. I installed MOS using all the defaults. 2GB System partition and a 28 GB Work partition.

Installation was VERY fast! Once complete, I ejected the Boot CD and rebooted the computer. MorphOS is fast when booting from a hard disk. It's lightning fast on this CF card setup.

To install Pack Chrysalis 3.9.1, I used a disk image on a USB thumb drive. Once inserted into the front USB port, I mounted the image and proceeded to install Chrysalis. Installation was incredibly fast.

This is a must have for any user. I've had CF card readers in my A3000 and A4000. I know how fast they are, but I'm really impressed at how fast it is on the G5. I have grown accustomed to having a hard disk in this machine and the boot times associated with it. I am contemplating on multiple CF setups, MorphOS CF, MacOS CF, Linux CF. When I want to switch, I just remove one and insert another.

If there is interest, I'll post photos of this setup. There may be other SATA to CF card adapters out there that work. This one is a definite.

[Crumb]

Why not use a real ssd? cf cards are not as good as ssds for multiple access. ssds  are really cheap and you can plug then directly

[stevee617]

Why not use a real ssd? cf cards are not as good as ssds for multiple access. ssds  are really cheap and you can plug then directly

For the same reason a lot of other people use them...it's a fun experiment and they're inexpensive -> $53 vs. $116