• OT - hardware related - but not PI

    From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to All on Fri Jan 27 16:50:42 2023
    Apology for non-pi post - but this group has some really hardware
    knowledge in general

    It is getting harder to get a Pi, so I tried Ebay - and got two
    thin clients.

    The first did not have a hard drive, it has a DOM-thing (Eprom/flash)
    but it also has a SATA port - so I installed a 2.5" SATA disk.
    Works well.


    The second - not arrived yet - has no hard drive, nor a SATA port,
    but a CF-card. I read that CF-card are very much like P-ATA or IDE drives.
    I do have a 1.8" IDE drive and a 2.5" one too.

    I see _lots_ of adapters for replacing an IDE drive with a CF card.
    I can find _no_ adapter for replacing a CF-card with an IDE drive

    Is there such a thing?
    Or should I just buy a bigger CF card - or a SD-to-CF-card adapter and
    use an SD-card? (it will come with 1 GB CF-card - which is too small)


    --
    /Björn

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Fri Jan 27 16:11:18 2023
    Björn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:
    The second - not arrived yet - has no hard drive, nor a SATA port,
    but a CF-card. I read that CF-card are very much like P-ATA or IDE drives.
    I do have a 1.8" IDE drive and a 2.5" one too.

    I see _lots_ of adapters for replacing an IDE drive with a CF card.
    I can find _no_ adapter for replacing a CF-card with an IDE drive

    Is there such a thing?
    Or should I just buy a bigger CF card - or a SD-to-CF-card adapter and
    use an SD-card? (it will come with 1 GB CF-card - which is too small)

    CF cards are really small form-factor PCMCIA cards - at one time you could
    get a passive adapter to fit them in a PCMCIA slot. Traditional PCMCIA
    carried the ISA bus[*], and IDE is related to the ISA bus, hence you could
    use a CF card as an IDE drive in a PCMCIA slot.

    But IDE is just one mode CF cards can talk - there are others. Generally a camera or similar is not using the IDE mode. So this means you couldn't
    plug your IDE-to-CF adapter into a camera or other CF device and expect it
    to work - it would only work if the CF device was only using the IDE mode in the first place. The rest of the time the IDE drive wouldn't respond.

    This is why you can't buy them, because in most cases they wouldn't work. Selling something that doesn't work in most of the use cases is not a road
    to riches.

    So either of your options of buying a bigger CF card, or an SD to CF adapter would be worth trying. I'd guess you can buy bigger/cheaper SD cards
    nowadays than CF cards, but beware in case there are size limitations (I
    think SD has protocol limits at 4GB and 2TB, and IDE at 8GB and 128GB) - it
    may be the adapter is only good up to a certain size.

    Theo

    [*] More recent PC Cards were CardBus which carried PCI, and later
    ExpressCards which carried PCIe

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  • From Andrew Smallshaw@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Sun Jan 29 19:59:59 2023
    On 2023-01-27, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:

    The second - not arrived yet - has no hard drive, nor a SATA port,
    but a CF-card. I read that CF-card are very much like P-ATA or IDE drives.
    I do have a 1.8" IDE drive and a 2.5" one too.

    Personally I'd wait until the unit arrives before opening it up
    and seeing what there is to work with. I wouldn't be remotely
    suprised if there is a space on the board just waiting for you to
    put a 40 or 44 pin IDE socket in it and solder in place. I know
    I've had a few Neoware terminals in the past that were the reverse
    of what you describe - 44 pin IDE socket on board but space to
    solder in a CF card socket if you were so inclined.

    Couple of points to bear in mind: IDE is 5V only for signalling.
    2.5" drives on 44 pin connectors are 5V for power too, 3.5"/40 pin
    drives need 12V as well which may not be around in a thin client.
    CF cards can be either 5V or 3.3V, if your machine comes with a
    3.3V card you have further research to do as to the viability of
    any swap. Doesn't necessarily make it a show stopper but it's
    something to consider carefully before you proceed.

    Secondly is that CF cards use a lot less power than even laptop
    drives. Are you sure the power is there for a hard drive? Many
    thin clients only have supplies in the 60W range for the entire
    system, sometimes less.

    Finally, is there even space in the case to mount a hard drive
    anywhere?

    --
    Andrew Smallshaw
    andrews@sdf.org

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Andrew Smallshaw on Mon Jan 30 10:41:07 2023
    On 2023-01-29 20:59, Andrew Smallshaw wrote:
    On 2023-01-27, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:

    The second - not arrived yet - has no hard drive, nor a SATA port,
    but a CF-card. I read that CF-card are very much like P-ATA or IDE drives. >> I do have a 1.8" IDE drive and a 2.5" one too.

    Personally I'd wait until the unit arrives before opening it up
    and seeing what there is to work with. I wouldn't be remotely
    suprised if there is a space on the board just waiting for you to
    put a 40 or 44 pin IDE socket in it and solder in place.

    That would be nice


    Couple of points to bear in mind: IDE is 5V only for signalling.
    2.5" drives on 44 pin connectors are 5V for power too, 3.5"/40 pin
    drives need 12V as well which may not be around in a thin client.
    CF cards can be either 5V or 3.3V, if your machine comes with a
    3.3V card you have further research to do as to the viability of
    any swap. Doesn't necessarily make it a show stopper but it's
    something to consider carefully before you proceed.

    Noted


    Secondly is that CF cards use a lot less power than even laptop
    drives. Are you sure the power is there for a hard drive? Many
    thin clients only have supplies in the 60W range for the entire
    system, sometimes less.

    Hmm, this one has lees. 30 w I think I read.
    I did think of a 2.5" drive, but I also have 1.8"
    It was an replacement for an ipod gen 4

    Finally, is there even space in the case to mount a hard drive
    anywhere?

    Good question. I do not know.

    It should arrive in the week.
    Exiting



    --
    /Björn

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Theo on Mon Jan 30 10:38:02 2023
    On 2023-01-27 17:11, Theo wrote:
    Björn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:


    This is why you can't buy them, because in most cases they wouldn't work.

    Ok, that sounds reasonable




    So either of your options of buying a bigger CF card, or an SD to CF adapter would be worth trying. I'd guess you can buy bigger/cheaper SD cards nowadays than CF cards, but beware in case there are size limitations (I think SD has protocol limits at 4GB and 2TB, and IDE at 8GB and 128GB) - it may be the adapter is only good up to a certain size.

    I'll go SD-to-CF-adapter first

    Thanks for the details




    --
    /Björn

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  • From Andrew Smallshaw@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Mon Jan 30 23:16:00 2023
    On 2023-01-30, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:

    Secondly is that CF cards use a lot less power than even laptop
    drives. Are you sure the power is there for a hard drive? Many
    thin clients only have supplies in the 60W range for the entire
    system, sometimes less.

    Hmm, this one has lees. 30 w I think I read.
    I did think of a 2.5" drive, but I also have 1.8"
    It was an replacement for an ipod gen 4

    I'm very dubious. I tried using those 1.8" Microdrives perhaps a
    decade ago. Kind of worked, but drives for the likes of an iPod
    are very aggressive when it comes to power saving - they'll spin
    down after a few seconds of inactivity, and then take a few seconds
    to spin up again.

    --
    Andrew Smallshaw
    andrews@sdf.org

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Andrew Smallshaw on Tue Jan 31 09:38:47 2023
    On 2023-01-31 00:16, Andrew Smallshaw wrote:
    On 2023-01-30, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:


    I'm very dubious. I tried using those 1.8" Microdrives perhaps a
    decade ago. Kind of worked, but drives for the likes of an iPod
    are very aggressive when it comes to power saving - they'll spin
    down after a few seconds of inactivity, and then take a few seconds
    to spin up again.

    Is that within the drive, or is it the iPod firmware that requests the spin-down?

    Did anyone here use an 1.8" drive with the Pi? Via USB?
    Experiences would be interesting to know of.


    However I am also a bit hesitant now - mostly because I realise adapters
    are difficult for them.
    And of course since I don't know yet if there is a way to solder on an
    IDE port at all on the motherboard.



    --
    /Björn

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Tue Jan 31 10:33:57 2023
    Björn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:
    On 2023-01-31 00:16, Andrew Smallshaw wrote:
    On 2023-01-30, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:


    I'm very dubious. I tried using those 1.8" Microdrives perhaps a
    decade ago. Kind of worked, but drives for the likes of an iPod
    are very aggressive when it comes to power saving - they'll spin
    down after a few seconds of inactivity, and then take a few seconds
    to spin up again.

    Is that within the drive, or is it the iPod firmware that requests the spin-down?

    Did anyone here use an 1.8" drive with the Pi? Via USB?
    Experiences would be interesting to know of.

    There were also these:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
    but they only got as far as 16GB, which is a bit disappointing today.
    Would be enough to boot a Pi (or thin client) for laughs, though.

    Theo

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Tue Jan 31 14:43:20 2023
    Björn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:
    On 2023-01-31 11:33, Theo wrote:

    There were also these:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
    but they only got as far as 16GB, which is a bit disappointing today.
    Would be enough to boot a Pi (or thin client) for laughs, though.

    Interesting.
    I headed to ebay and got 2 6Gb. delivery early March though
    6gb will cover my needs for this one.
    Thanks

    I would expect performance to be absolutely, diabolically, awful :-)
    Even the cheapest nastiest flash CF card would be a lot quicker.

    But there's something to marvel at fitting a full HDD mechanism inside a CF card, even if the result is not very useful today. I wonder if you could replace the lid with a clear cover and watch it thrash...?

    Theo

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Theo on Tue Jan 31 15:27:22 2023
    On 2023-01-31 11:33, Theo wrote:

    There were also these:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
    but they only got as far as 16GB, which is a bit disappointing today.
    Would be enough to boot a Pi (or thin client) for laughs, though.

    Interesting.
    I headed to ebay and got 2 6Gb. delivery early March though
    6gb will cover my needs for this one.
    Thanks


    --
    /Björn

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Theo on Tue Jan 31 15:54:23 2023
    On 2023-01-31 15:43, Theo wrote:
    I would expect performance to be absolutely, diabolically, awful :-)
    Even the cheapest nastiest flash CF card would be a lot quicker.

    But there's something to marvel at fitting a full HDD mechanism inside a CF card, even if the result is not very useful today. I wonder if you could replace the lid with a clear cover and watch it thrash...?

    Theo

    So,
    The cpu is slow
    The disk is slow
    there is only 1 Gb of RAM
    Naturally I expect the system to run slow on it.

    I develop Warehouse Control systems for a living.
    I like to try to fit it into small devices.
    I'll use the thin client for compiling the system.

    I prefer a hard-drive, since I think daily compilation of 1.2 locs
    will kill the flash soon.

    Yes, I could go with a usb 2.0 but where is the fun in that?

    The advantage of testing on a very slow system is that it might reveal
    timing issues that would not appear otherwise.

    I did port the system to the Pi, but I cannot run it properly, since
    both MS-sql-server and Oracle still lack non-java drivers for ARM
    platforms. It runs on postgresql - but then our client does not support
    pg :-(

    Now, I get to test it for real

    Thanks for your input

    --
    /Björn

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to All on Tue Jan 31 15:58:53 2023
    On 2023-01-31 15:54, Björn Lundin wrote:
    I prefer a hard-drive, since I think daily compilation of 1.2 locs

    1.2 Mlocs that is

    --
    /Björn

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  • From Andrew Smallshaw@3:770/3 to bnl@nowhere.com on Wed Feb 1 11:08:01 2023
    On 2023-01-31, Bj?rn Lundin <bnl@nowhere.com> wrote:
    On 2023-01-31 00:16, Andrew Smallshaw wrote:

    I'm very dubious. I tried using those 1.8" Microdrives perhaps a
    decade ago. Kind of worked, but drives for the likes of an iPod
    are very aggressive when it comes to power saving - they'll spin
    down after a few seconds of inactivity, and then take a few seconds
    to spin up again.

    Is that within the drive, or is it the iPod firmware that requests the spin-down?

    Did anyone here use an 1.8" drive with the Pi? Via USB?
    Experiences would be interesting to know of.

    The drive's firmware so you don't have control over it. This was
    in a Neoware thin client.

    --
    Andrew Smallshaw
    andrews@sdf.org

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Bj=c3=b6rn_Lundin?=@3:770/3 to Andrew Smallshaw on Wed Feb 1 13:14:58 2023
    On 2023-02-01 12:08, Andrew Smallshaw wrote:

    they'll spin
    down after a few seconds of inactivity, and then take a few seconds
    to spin up again.

    The drive's firmware so you don't have control over it.

    Ok, I'll then try to

    echo $(date) > /tmp/date.dat

    every other second or so, to keep it spinning


    --
    /Björn

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  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Wed Feb 1 15:17:59 2023
    On 31 Jan 2023 10:33:57 +0000 (GMT), Theo
    <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> declaimed the following:


    but they only got as far as 16GB, which is a bit disappointing today.
    Would be enough to boot a Pi (or thin client) for laughs, though.

    In one of my photo bags is a small drive with rechargeable battery (after all these years, probably won't hold a charge -- good thing the
    drive can be used from charger plug). The unit had slots for all 5 major
    memory card formats of the period.

    One would insert a card, press the copy button, and the card contents would be copied to a (newly created) directory on the drive.

    Problem these days? It is a 40GB (unformatted) drive -- and the camera in that bag now has 32GB CF cards! (Maybe a few 16GB, but I think I moved
    those to the other camera [8Mpixel vs 15Mpixel], and moved that one's 8&4GB cards to the even older 4Mpixel P&S camera [I'd been using a 256MB card in
    that camera, had a 64MB card for secondary, and the factory provided card
    was a whopping 32MegaBytes -- could only hold about 12 photos!]). Could
    only back-up one filled CF card (and you don't want to do multiple backups while filling the card, as each backup copies everything).


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

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  • From NY@3:770/3 to Dennis Lee Bieber on Fri Feb 3 09:27:47 2023
    "Dennis Lee Bieber" <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:0phlthpvelgdjhhsudseif3fmf3oj0fdsd@4ax.com...
    On 31 Jan 2023 10:33:57 +0000 (GMT), Theo
    <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> declaimed the following:


    but they only got as far as 16GB, which is a bit disappointing today.
    Would be enough to boot a Pi (or thin client) for laughs, though.

    In one of my photo bags is a small drive with rechargeable battery
    (after all these years, probably won't hold a charge -- good thing the
    drive can be used from charger plug). The unit had slots for all 5 major memory card formats of the period.

    One would insert a card, press the copy button, and the card contents
    would be copied to a (newly created) directory on the drive.

    Problem these days? It is a 40GB (unformatted) drive -- and the camera
    in that bag now has 32GB CF cards! (Maybe a few 16GB, but I think I moved those to the other camera [8Mpixel vs 15Mpixel], and moved that one's
    8&4GB
    cards to the even older 4Mpixel P&S camera [I'd been using a 256MB card in that camera, had a 64MB card for secondary, and the factory provided card
    was a whopping 32MegaBytes -- could only hold about 12 photos!]). Could
    only back-up one filled CF card (and you don't want to do multiple backups while filling the card, as each backup copies everything).

    Presumably you would use the copy-from-CF-to-HDD device just for making a safety copy while you are away from home (or freeing up space on the
    camera's CF card), and you will empty its drive once you get back home and
    save all/most of the photos to permanent storage. Given that, how often will you fill up 40 GB while you are away from your permanent-storage computer?

    They were/are a good idea: more portable than taking a laptop and maybe an external USB hard drive, though a laptop does give you the ability to
    preview pictures and determine whether there are any problems that may need
    you to re-shoot photos. A camera's back-screen is OK at a pinch, but not as good for showing exposure/focussing errors.

    Can it take SDHC (the high-capacity version of SD) cards? Since your camera uses CF rather than SD, it may not matter, but it's always worth having something that cam copy SD in case you need to back up contents of a
    cellphone etc which uses SD. I also carry around in my cellphone case a micro-SD to normal-SD adaptor so I can read a micro-SD card (from a phone
    etc) in a computer that only has a normal-SD slot.

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  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Fri Feb 3 14:02:56 2023
    On Fri, 3 Feb 2023 09:27:47 -0000, "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> declaimed the following:


    Presumably you would use the copy-from-CF-to-HDD device just for making a >safety copy while you are away from home (or freeing up space on the
    camera's CF card), and you will empty its drive once you get back home and >save all/most of the photos to permanent storage. Given that, how often will >you fill up 40 GB while you are away from your permanent-storage computer?


    Hard to state -- For the dSLRs I'm configured to save both RAW and JPEG in parallel. Without digging up the camera, I think that comes to about 900 images (from the 15Mpixel) per 32GB CF card.

    They were/are a good idea: more portable than taking a laptop and maybe an >external USB hard drive, though a laptop does give you the ability to
    preview pictures and determine whether there are any problems that may need >you to re-shoot photos. A camera's back-screen is OK at a pinch, but not as >good for showing exposure/focussing errors.

    It was useful back when my CF cards were in the 1-4GB range (I actually have a mixer/recorder -- BOSS BR-600 -- that won't work with a CF card
    larger than 1GB!). I could fill a card with images from a day out, then
    back it up to the portable drive.

    Can it take SDHC (the high-capacity version of SD) cards? Since your camera

    I suspect not -- it is ancient <G>

    uses CF rather than SD, it may not matter, but it's always worth having >something that cam copy SD in case you need to back up contents of a >cellphone etc which uses SD. I also carry around in my cellphone case a >micro-SD to normal-SD adaptor so I can read a micro-SD card (from a phone >etc) in a computer that only has a normal-SD slot.

    The SD card in my phone is barely touched...


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

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