Rockbox Technical Forums
Support and General Use => Hardware => Topic started by: chris_s on January 07, 2019, 04:34:03 PM
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Does anyone know why it's easy to get SD cards in capacities of 400 or 512GB but nobody seems to produce a (PATA-based) 512GB CompactFlash card (anymore). Apparently Lexar did at one point in the past but not anymore. Does anyone think there's a chance we'll see one again in the future? I love my Rockbox'd iPod but could really use an upgrade from 256GB of CompactFlash storage. SD-Adapters don't seem reliable (if they work at all) in my experience when it comes to compatibility with Rockbox. Any other alternatives on an iPod 4G?
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My guess is that digital photography has solidly moved toward SD cards as the standard and there isn't the demand for 512 GB CF cards which cost multiples of what an SD card does. CF may have (or had) a write speed advantage over SD in very specific circumstances but the gap has probably narrowed for the most common usages.
When you say that SD adapters don't work well, do you mean the iFlash SD adapter? There are also SD-to-CF adapters but I think those have issues as well. From the few things I've seen about SD-to-CF, the adapters may fail to work with SD cards above certain capacities or speeds. You'd have to research reviews thoroughly to see what combination may work.
Another option may be an mSATA SSD. I have a laptop with a ZIF PATA connector for the HDD. I grabbed a ZIF to mSATA adapter and am using a 500 GB mSATA SSD in that laptop now without issue. For the iPod 4G, you may need a 50-to-40 pin adapter cable because I believe the iPod 4G has a 50 pin connector where the ZIF to mSATA adapter uses 40 pin on the PATA connection. Of course, I don't know that this combination has ever been tested in an iPod/Rockbox setup so I can't say that it'll work. Physical dimensions may be a fundamental limitation so I would measure everything out before investing in it.
Here are links to the adapter and SSD I have working in my laptop:
ZIF to mSATA Adapter (https://www.amazon.com/SMAKN-mSATA-40pin-Cable-Adapter/dp/B00XV9Z6KQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546976674&sr=8-2&keywords=msata+zif+adapter)
500 GB mSATA SSD (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-250GB-mSATA-Internal-MZ-M6E250BW/dp/B07822P8JY/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1546976760&sr=1-3&keywords=msata&th=1)
Should you need it, the 50-to-40 pin adapter (https://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-Toshiba-Adapter/dp/B009BG1ETA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546976962&sr=8-1&keywords=zif+40+to+50). Good luck!
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Thank you, I may have to look into all of that at some point. Although it seems that anything that comes closest to the originally used hardware/protocols without (active) adapters involved seems to have the highest chances of resulting in trouble-free operation. I've tried both SD-to-CF and iFlash adapters with little success (although adjusting the ATA timings helped somewhat to get them to work at all). But like you say, I guess it can always depend on the specific card used as well. CF cards, on the other hand, seem to behave pretty much in the same way as the original hard drive does. Just seems weird to me that such products used to exist at a certain point (http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/lexar-800x-512gb-professional-compactflash-card-review/), and now, a few years later, you can only buy cards with lower amounts of storage. Usually it seems to go the other way. :o
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I don't look forward to the day when I have to search for something beyond 256 GB. As it is now, I'm about 10 GB shy of max'ing out the 128 GB ZIF SSD I have in my Rockbox'd mp3 player. There is a 256 GB ZIF SSD available, at least for now.
For what it's worth, some of the reviews for the mSATA-to-ZIF adapter I linked to are from iPod users who used the adapter to upgrade their storage. I imagine they might be running the official firmware, though, and not Rockbox.