Compact Flash Faster than My Hard Drive
Following up on Compact Flash
Hard Drive Options, Jeffrey Bergier says:
I have a success story for you.
Bought the Addonics
adapter, and I ordered an A-Data Turbo 266x 8 GB from Newegg.com
for $85 I think it was. There was no mention of
UDMA on the spec list, but it did have a blurb that said 266x was
only in IDE mode. So I risked it. They both came, I imaged the
Compact Flash card from the Pismo
via my PowerBook G4 and FireWire Target Disk mode and Carbon Copy
Cloner.
Plugged it in and it booted. No noise at all. I also notice
significant improvements in boot time and application launch time.
It must be from the faster seek times inherent to flash memory.
Strangely, not a big improvement in battery life. But I will cure
that on eBay with some batteries that have a higher mAh rating than
the Pismo's did new.
Thanks for your help, keep up the great stories in LEM,
Jeff
Jeff,
Great to hear of your success, your PowerBook's
silence, and faster boot and program launch times. Except for
limited capacity, flash memory has a lot of advantages over hard
drives.
Dan
Compact Flash in a Clamshell iBook
Kathleen McGregor writes:
Dan,
I have been reading the articles about using Compact Flash to
boot from with a lot of interest. I am one of those that the fan
noise drives insane.
I have a 466 Paris iBook SE
that I just loved. The fan noise drove me crazy though, so I
replaced it when the 867 PowerBook
12" came out. (I am a little sorry about that purchase too, as
I should have known better with the lack of ability to
upgrade).
Long story short, I took the iBook in today to purchase a 512
[MB] chip. I am planning to pass on the iBook to my niece who is
nine and would get a major bang out of it. However, I also learned
that the fan noise is not the fan at all but the hard drive, which
is getting ready to fail, wouldn't you know.
Last night I came across my FireWire Compact Flash reader, and I
put two and two together, and wondered if you think I could load
Panther onto a Compact Flash card and boot from there? I could use
a plain old flash drive to save documents. Basically, I just want
something quiet to do my word processing with, and it is so fun to
take the iBook around by the handle even though it weighs a
ton.
If you think this might be possible, let me know. Then let me
know how big the CF card ought to be to hold Panther and Office.
This would be so totally cool, and then I'll have to think of
something else for the niece.
I hope you don't mind my picking your brain. Since I wasn't
willing to do something like this with the PowerBook having just
replaced the hard drive, I literally just thought of this.
Thank you,
Kathleen McGregor
Loyal LEM Reader for years (Paris book was bought after iceBooks
came out)
Kathleen,
This should work. I've heard of people running
OS X and Office with an 8 GB Compact Flash card, and
Addonics has dropped the price of their 2-card adapter to the same
$26 as the single-card adapter used to sell for. You might want to
consider an 8 GB card for the OS and apps plus a 2 GB or
4 GB card for data.
Or you could buy a cheap flash drive for your
documents....
Be forewarned that putting a clamshell iBook back
together is a real challenge.
Dan
Hi Dan,
I figured it out from another article, but it was not as
complicated as the author made it, as he was using a flash drive.
My P'book runs from the Compact Flash, although when I used the
battery up (which does not last much longer, probably due to the
FireWire), the fan came on as the battery charged.
As for the iBook, I am still working on it. As I set it up with
the P'book in the interest of time - one of the steps I skipped
(repairing permissions) I am working on right now. I will let you
know if it works.
Kathleen
More Tips on eBay Feedback
Ed Eubanks Jr writes with
regards to eBay Feedback: Proceed
with Caution:
Dan,
Good piece recently about eBay feedback. I've had a lot of
experience with eBay, and here's a little of my wisdom from
experience:
- Wait to give negative feedback. eBay won't allow
feedback after a certain amount of time after an auction (maybe 60
days?), so on the rare occasion that I've left negative feedback,
I've waited until the very last day. This serves two purposes: It
gives as much time as "possible" to resolve the conflict, and it
helps to prevent false negative feedback in response.
- Be patient. While there are plenty of "eBay businesses"
out there that try to act like a real, professional store, most of
the sellers (including many of these operations) are just folks
selling stuff out of their garage or basement in their spare time.
Thus, they may realistically be unable to respond within hours or
get your package shipped the same afternoon. My guess is that 90%
or more of all negative feedback on eBay is from buyers, and
I'd bet that more than half of this is because the buyers simply
weren't patient enough with the sellers.
- Disclaim as much as possible. As a seller, I've taken to
spelling out as much about what I'm willing to do or not do as I
can think of. This sometimes doesn't help-- I've accepted things
returned or given refunds for auctions I clearly labeled "As-is"
and "All sales are final." But making such claims in the
description will give me grounds for reluctance, at least, and then
if I end up accommodating them then I've done them a favor.
I don't know if you'll benefit from any of these tips (or if
readers would), but there you go.
Ed
eSATA for PowerBooks
Bill Pandos writes:
Dear Mr. Knight,
My name is Bill Pandos and I have been using Macs for the past
four years (mainly third-party software).
The reason of my contact is because lately I've been thinking of
purchasing an external hard disk for my PowerBook G4 (17", 1,5 GHz), and the one I'm
thinking of buying is an external eSATA from Western Digital. So, I
was wondering if my PowerBook supports such kind of hard drives; is
it possible to connect this type of hard drive to my PowerBook and
how?
Thank you for your time and attention to my email. I'll be
waiting for your news.
Best Regards,
Bill Pandos
Bill,
No PowerBook supports eSATA by itself, but you can
buy an eSATA CardBus card for any PowerBook with a CardBus slot.
Here are three Mac-compatible one's I found using Google: - Tip Jar
Dan
The Importance of G3 Support in Leopard
Cecily Wood writes:
I have been a techie, but I also live in a real world where my
mother-in-law still has dialup (still has analog dial phone
service - funny to listen to it dial her ISP), where friends will
not do email, won't buy online because it is "not safe" but
will give out credit card numbers over the phone to a person who
audibly repeats it so you know they have it correct! They will
not check Snopes, but
persist in forwarding the hysterical virus hoaxes, send chain
letters the USPO would prosecute for, believe Mr. Rogers was a
sniper in the Marines, or Bill Gates is giving away money if you
give Microsoft your ID info because somebody sent them an email,
and in general are really not safe to cross the electronic street.
Naive and gullible don't even begin to describe the depths of many
computer users.
Even in a large school system, no matter how much training (Mac
or PC), the users still can't or won't set margins or tabs ("It's
tooo Haaard!"), so whenever you try to "fix" something, the whole
thing goes haywire, but even here, the support staff and techs are
miles above the crowd, and it is too easy to assume most people are
like us. Maybe we can't afford the newest, fastest, but want
reasonable performance, but also - particularly as you
retire - need to keep your machines working longer than you want
to.
There is a real and huge disconnect between the people
who design the newest, coolest, fastest, stuff, who review and test
it, who play with it, who support it - and one of those disconnects
is you simply cannot imagine that 80 percent of the populace is
either technophobic or technomoronic or technoinept. When you look
at all the people buying the HDTVs
with the 720 pixels, they have no idea they are being shafted. At
it's worst, the upper echelon and technogeeks display
techno-arrogance, and at it's best, techno-obliviousness.
It really has been a machine for the rest of
us.
But the Mac, cool design, and snazzy interface, is more than
just that. It really has been a machine for the rest of us. Once
set up properly, it's like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and
going and going. I have 10.2.8 running on a Bondi iMac for a grandson (3 GB HD),
and it's worked for years (but it took a lot of tweaking, I admit,
to fit it on there). Still, in that time my son has been thru three
(four?) separate hardware meltdowns and new machine/Windows
operating systems.
Washington Apple Pi does
amazing things with old Macs as servers, etc.
On a Mac what takes three commands routinely (and still does)
takes 6 to 10 commands on Windows. Mac users, because all
interfaces are alike, don't tell you to use F7 (save in one
program, when you are in another that uses F3). They all know how
to save once they learned it in one program.
I have a G3 clamshell, gen 2
- no FireWire, and I have, over the years, given it a much larger
hard drive, doubled the original maximum memory, etc. Replacing it
with a much newer used iBook isn't practical - cost, and the newer
machines on sale have far less memory and storage. I use it
traveling and to hold reams of photos as I travel. Not being able
to upgrade it is really annoying. So I don't get the extra pixels -
it's good at what it does, but . . . I only want to use a
single system.
I have stayed behind so I could support my mother's computer
east coast to west coast, because keeping a range of OSes working
isn't the most practical solution to supporting other Macs. When
you can get them all on one level - the one you also work on - you
have a whale of a greater chance of finding and fixing something
quickly.
Now that I can get the newest OS, I not only want it, it is
affordable - except for the grandkids old iMac and my clamshell.
Apple will do itself a big disservice if it doesn't help build in
some more support for earlier machines. Many of the iPod youngsters
won't have a problem, but the older parents who got those kids
their iPods, and then one for themselves, found out how easy and
cool Apple and the Mac really is - those are people who will also
be miffed, big time, if they bought an older affordable Mac for
themselves.
It's simply bad PR when they are finally beginning to up their
market share.
Thanks for having your wonderful service!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cecily Wood
Cecily,
You make a good point about the techno-clueless
among us. The people who believe Windows is a secure platform
because of all the commercial anti-virus, anti-spyware, and
anti-malware programs out there. Who can't imagine that free
software is worthwhile. Who can't fathom a virus-free computer and
are thus skeptical of our claims as Mac users.
(Speaking of the techno-clueless, I saw the best
deal ever on a flat panel TV over the weekend. Maybe a 15" or 17"
one for just US$229! How many people would buy it never guessing
that 480 lines of resolution isn't going to satisfy them as HDTV
takes over?)
Also the issue of support. At my last job,
supporting 80-some Macs, we standardized on Mac OS 7.5.5 as long as
practical, then on OS 8.1 because it worked on all the Macs we
used. Supporting the same OS for all users is a real plus - and
something Apple currently benefits from with 2/3 of all OS X
users on Tiger.
No word from Apple on G3 support. You may have to
stick with Tiger for the long haul. Much cheaper than getting
everyone to upgrade to G4 hardware.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
