PCMCIA and CompactFlash (CF) card adapters

[sojourner]

Hoping someone can help with an issue here. Would like to get an 8GB CF (compact flash card) working at optimum speed in a PCMCIA adapter which slips into the Cardbus (PCMCIA) slot in a T41. Currently write transfer speeds to the CF are s-l-o-w, approx. 1.1 MBs. That is painstakingly slow, especially when copying a DVD to it for playback.

Conversely, when the same CF card is used in a USB adapter (all connected to the T41) the write speed goes to 4.8MB sec., over a fourfold increase. A 6.3GB DVD takes about 21 minutes to copy. So the CF can handle write speeds of 5MBs (they advertise 33MBs read, should be able to do writes faster than 5MBs too).

The idea is to keep the CF card in the PCMCIA adapter and NOT have to connect to USB adapter for faster speed! Anyone know why the PCMCIA setup is so slow?

Was also wondering if all PCMCIA / CF adapters are created equal, i.e. are some adapters faster than others? Is my TP setup wrong? Maybe a BIOS setting somewhere making PCMCIA slow?? BTW, the system here is a multiboot and every Win OS is the same regarding PCMCIA ... s-l-o-w.

Help appreciated!

[sjthinkpader]

Cardbus should support USB 2.0 speed. Looks like there are CF to Cardbus adapters made for speed.

http://www.prophotohome.com/forum/stora ... ptors.html

[sojourner]

Cardbus should support USB 2.0 speed. Looks like there are CF to Cardbus adapters made for speed.

http://www.prophotohome.com/forum/stora ... ptors.html

Thanks for the link! It seems these guys are discussing exactly what I've seen, the same s-l-o-w speed performance with PCMCIA!

Have learned reading through that thread (and other posts) this is typical and the transfer speed can only be improved with a special 32bit PCMCIA / CompactFlash Adapter! (never imagined)

Thanks again

[zdriver]

Cardbus CF adapters are not special, just much more expensive than the cheap $8 16 bit adapter vs $56 for 32bit.
The ones with specs of pcmcia & cardbus are 16 bit adapters, they just also fit in a cardbus slot.
Looks like they are 4x faster than 16bit cards.
You get what you pay for...

Here is a link to what you need with benchmarks.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0310/03102 ... ustest.asp

[sjthinkpader]

The PCMCIA rel 1.0 and rel 2.x had to support many legacy devices. So likely the driver implementation for legacy memory mode and I/O mode is very slow. Once a Cardbus device is detected, it should work much faster.

I took a look at the original 1990 PCMCIA rel. 1.0 spec (yes, I have a copy) and it is an asynchronous bus. May be Cardbus is synchronous with burst mode.

I tested this with a Cardbus to USB2.0 adapter and a USB Microdrive transferring a large file folder last night. It was able to achieve more than 20Mb transfer rate mainly limited by my NAS bandwidth.

[pascaal]

Was also wondering if all PCMCIA / CF adapters are created equal, i.e. are some adapters faster than others?

There are 16-bit PCMCIA adapters (popular), 32-bit hi-speed Cardbus adapters with PIO transfer modes (not so popular), and also a 32-bit Cardbus adapters with UDMA mode (rare... maybe few manufacturers, I know only one).

Delkin makes one such UDMA Cardbus CF adapter:
http://www.delkin.com/products/adapters/cardbusudma/

I have two of this babies (in each PCMCIA slot of T23), transfer really reaches up to 40 MB/s (and it is the CF card limit). If interested, you can purchase delkin UDMA CF cards in mydigitaldiscout.com ($39.99).

Regards,
Pascaal

[marYn]

Hi Pascaal, is it possible to boot on CF via this Delkin PCMCIA adapter?

[sjthinkpader]

I have never hear of booting on PCMCIA device.

But you can boot using a CF to PATA adapter in either the HDD or Ultrabay slot. This is discussed in some details in the 8GB SSD thread.

You can boot from USB as well. The USB memory stick special on www.lenovo.com come with software that allows booting from USB.

Edit:
The handheld Poqet computer sold in early '90s has only two PCMCIA slots. So booting from PCMCIA slot of course is also possible, just a BIOS implementation.

[pascaal]

Hi Pascaal, is it possible to boot on CF via this Delkin PCMCIA adapter?

Unfortunately, no (or not yet).

There is no technical impossibility, but in Windows to boot from drive without BIOS int13h support, you must have special driver (ntbootd.sys -- these are provided by hardware manufacturers, e.g. raid controllers and motherboards producers); problem is, this can't be PnP mode driver, which drive the PCMCIA adapter after system boot; and Delkin did not provide boot-time driver (too bad);

As for Linux, there would be possibility to install root filesystem on PCMCIA CF and to boot kernel from small regular partition (or even small USB stick), but... there are no drivers for Delkin cards in Linux .


Some time ago I was doing a research on reverse engineering Delkin PnP mode driver to install it as legacy mode driver for booting... But this is hard job and I don't know if I ever gonna make it.

But its good to hear, that anybody else looked for that possibility .


Regards,
Pascaal

[Boissez]

Hi Pascaal.

I'd like to know if you've managed to make such a driver? I'm currently trying to make my lappie work with windows XP, the Delkin UDMA adapter and a 300x Lexar card - and just as you predicted it won't work ... what's extra annoying is that I can boot of a regular 16-bit PCMCIA adapter but loading windows @ 1 Mb/s is just too painful...

[Pilotaviola]

I can boot of a regular 16-bit PCMCIA adapter but loading windows @ 1 Mb/s is just too painful...

You can boot from PCMCIA in a T4x laptop? Which one? What BIOS?
I thought it was impossible from my T40

[Boissez]

You can boot from PCMCIA in a T4x laptop? Which one? What BIOS?
I thought it was impossible from my T40

Not really. I'm using a Toshiba R100 laptop (same chipset and drive as the T40 IIRC) and I just thought I could find some relevant tips and tricks around here.
PS: sorry about the late reply.

[brixvold]

delkin and lexar both make a 32bit pccard cf readers.
evil rumor has it that it is in fact the same product with different stickers on.

got a lexar myself and it really works wonders compared to the sleazy 16bit adapters

[Maccess]

I have the same problem with the CF slot on an X22. I bought a 4GB CF card to put in the X22's built-in CF slot hoping for a speed boost by running eBoostr.

Unfortunately eBoostr reports that the maximum random READ speed is only 1.3 - 1.4 MBps, while the hard drive was reporting 5MBps. IN other words, it was actually slower to be running off the compactflash card in the X22s slot.

I tried reinstalling the original pre-load (and updating all the way to WXP SP3) but there was no improvement--random READ speed was stuck at 1.3 - 1.4 MBps.

Am I stuck with this CF speed, or is there some magic driver update I can install that will boost the speed to at least 4MBps? Device manager reports that the CF card runs off a PCMCIA/ATAPI interface that only does PIO (and not DMA, like the hard drive).

[bwh1969]

I searched for a very long time for some of the issues that surround Linux and the Delkin 32 bit PCMCIA adapter. It will not run faster than 2 MBPS because of the Delkin_c(soemthing) module. It has been backward engineered apparently so that it will at least work, however, DMA cannot be set with the current driver so you are stuck with PIO 0 mode. This adapter will run up to 10-20 times that rate under Windows XP because Delkin's driver supports either DMA or PIO 5 or 6 (I am not if it is just the higher PIO mode or it it enables DMA).
SEE:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/e ... list=linux

They might get to a point where the PIO mode can be set to a higher number, but I am not thinking DMA will be enabled.

[tomh009]

If someone still needs one, I have a Delkin CardBus adapter I'd be happy to part with for a reasonable offer. I used it in my X31 and X61, but the X200s no longer has a CardBus slot. Send me a PM if you're interested ...