Which CF card for nanopeb?

[Ed in SoDak]

I seem to recall reading that certain CF cards do not play well with the nanopeb, but couldn't locate any reference. I don't want to buy one only to find out it won't work. I do have an older 2gig card I could use and install the new card in the camera, if need be. It's so well-used that the stickers have worn off and I can't even tell the maker, let alone speed. Any info or help? Thanks!!

-Ed

[+arcadeshopper]

trial and error.. the ones i have in my store both work.. sandisk 4gb and a generic 2gb card I got a stack of 

 

Greg

[majestyx]

So far, I've only had luck with SanDisk CF cards. I have a Transcend that gets corrupted every time I try to use it with the nanoPEB, and the SD-to-CF card adapter I'm using also has had no success with the 2GB PNY SD cards I have, as well as an ancient Lexar 128MB card I used many years ago in an HP camera. Too bad it wasn't designed to use SD cards, although there may be a technical reason for that.

 

The manual itself states this:

Due to TI-99/4a’s bus timing, hard disks and some Compact Flash cards will not work.
Generally, SanDisk and Kingston cards are reliable.

 

I'm sure Greg tests his cards before shipping, so if you're having a problem sourcing one that works, sounds like he can help you out.

[Ed in SoDak]

Thanks for the help! This is a non-working nanopeb, with neither the IDE to CF adapter nor a CF card. Not wishing to throw good money after bad, since it may all be for naught anyway. I'd at least like to start with something that's expected to work, I'll have enough of a challenge with the current non-working status to add more uncertainty.

-Ed

[+FarmerPotato]

45 minutes ago, Ed in SoDak said:

I seem to recall reading that certain CF cards do not play well with the nanopeb, but couldn't locate any reference. I don't want to buy one only to find out it won't work. I do have an older 2gig card I could use and install the new card in the camera, if need be. It's so well-used that the stickers have worn off and I can't even tell the maker, let alone speed. Any info or help? Thanks!!

-Ed

I have not experimented with others. These are the kinds that came with/work with my CF7+ and NanoPeb (so far interchangeable)

 

Sandisk 256MB

Kingston 32MB

Sandisk 2GB Ultra 15MB/s  (this ridiculous size is hard to back up/edit with TI99dir!)

 

[Ed in SoDak]

17 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said:

Sandisk 2GB Ultra 15MB/s  (this ridiculous size is hard to back up/edit with TI99dir!)

 

Hmmm... I just placed an order with Arcadeshopper for his refurbed 2gig. I did plan to use TI99dir, maybe I should cancel? It's by paypal, so I haven't totally commited to it yet.

 

This is Vorticon's old nanopeb which failed on him. I hope to apply my "magic touch" and somehow "fix" it. That may be unlikely, but I do want what I add to be useful and working on the slight chance I succeed.

 

For my own TI99 setup, a Gotek drive would be more in line for easier transferring of my old floppy collection, since the device will live with my existing PEB and a physical floppy drive.

-Ed

[Ed in SoDak]

I went with Greg's 2g refurbed card. Got the adapter on it's way from Wallyworld for 9 bucks shipped. If the nano can be made to work, I'd be in at about a third of the cost of new. If not, well, I'm not out much on the gamble and the CF card would still be useful for my camera.

[wierd_w]

The card needs to handle 8bit IO, from my limited understanding.  It's a legacy ATA mode, that's not really used by much these days.  The nanopeb (or at least the one I have?) has the entire other 8 bits of the IO literally sawed off the connector.

 

Getting a manufacturer to specify if their cards support 8bit IO mode or not is about as easy as getting them to tell you what the flash erase block size is on an SD Card.

 

Good luck with that.

 

Better to just make a database here on AA, that lists known working cards (with FCCID numbers to better track production runs.)

 

 

[Ed in SoDak]

Who knows? Not I! At least the CF is coming from our esteemed Greg, so there's that on it's behalf. The IDE adapter, well, that's part of the cheap gamble, choice based more on similar appearance and it had the three blinkin' lites.

 

Of course I won't know a thing about their function till I try 'em in a known non-working nanopeb that I somehow am able to make work. Nothin' ventured, nuttin' gained!

[hloberg]

Sandisk 256MB

Kingston 32MB

Sandisk 2GB Ultra 15MB/s  (this ridiculous size is hard to back up/edit with TI99dir!)

 

and mine has a Kingston 256mb

 

If you stick with these there is a high probability that they will work.  

 

[Ed in SoDak]

It's funny, when shopping for them, the small sizes cost more. Cheapest were the 2g and 4g, then the uber-large zoomed back up. Settled on the 2g from Greg as it was proven, cheap and more useful for my camera than the sub-gig sizes.

[atrax27407]

Does anyone have 256 Megs of TI programs?

[Ed in SoDak]

If I transfer all 200 of my old floppies, guessing 150 or so DSSD and the remaining 50 are SSSD, that would be about 31 meg. Of course, many of these are dupes and backups or just not too interesting. Some would no doubt be no longer readable. So maybe half that is worth preserving.

 

Then there's all the downloaded disk files and images of which I've only tried a small percentage. That might be 2, maybe 3 hundred megs or more. Of course that's a huge mental overload for me, but still hardly a strain on a 2g card (with 1g available for nanopeb). Besides, there's no need or sense to putting it all on the card at once. Anyway, I've got 'em all in my Classic99 folder already. When I get my own collection ported, that's where they'll go too.

 

Disk images can be misleading. Many have just a single program and maybe the docs but the image takes 360k when there's actually just a few K of content. I tend to prefer the folder of files FIAD approach.

 

If there's an issue with TIdir handling a 2g or bigger card, it's probably related to how many disks the menuing system is comfortable with. So I'd probably put the most interesting 50 or so on the card to start and go through them. When I get the urge, remove the ones I've reviewed and stick a new group on the card.

-Ed

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Ed in SoDak

[+arcadeshopper]

Ahh so his concern with the 2g card was the time it takes to back it up and restore it..  it does take a while..but it's like go watch a tv show and come back later kind of time.. not move to another state kind of time

 

[Ed in SoDak]

Greg, thanks for getting that card shipped out so soon. The adapter won't arrive till mid-month, by then I should be able to get the card ready and pile some stuff on it to try.

 

Crossing my Magic FIngers!

[+FarmerPotato]

 

18 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

Ahh so his concern with the 2g card was the time it takes to back it up and restore it..  it does take a while..but it's like go watch a tv show and come back later kind of time.. not move to another state kind of time

 

 

I seem to recall there is some utility that reads the whole card in, then pastes your dsk images into that, then writes the whole thing out.

That's not ti99dir then?

 

BTW for those new to this, the CF7/NanoPEB only uses one of every two bytes, so 2GB is .. a whole GB.

 

[+arcadeshopper]

 
 
I seem to recall there is some utility that reads the whole card in, then pastes your dsk images into that, then writes the whole thing out.
That's not ti99dir then?
 
BTW for those new to this, the CF7/NanoPEB only uses one of every two bytes, so 2GB is .. a whole GB.
 

Nope that's tidir.. it just takes a while to read and write.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[mizapf]

Or TIImageTool?

[+RXB]

On 9/2/2020 at 8:58 AM, atrax27407 said:

Does anyone have 256 Megs of TI programs?

My TI99/4A folder has 16.8 Gigs.

Now a ton of duplicates and backups are there too for TI stuff.

A lot of it is DOWNLOADS, but I do keep those free of Duplicates.

[gferluga]

How many volumes can be stored on a 32MB card?

I got 39. That puzzle me.

Thanks.

[Tursi]

30 minutes ago, gferluga said:

How many volumes can be stored on a 32MB card?

I got 39. That puzzle me.

Thanks.

That's about right.

 

The Nanopeb only uses half the data bus (8 bits of every 16 bits), and every stored disk is 400k (regardless of the actual formatted capacity). So this means every disk uses 800k of the CF's storage. 39 disks times 800k each is 31,200k, or 31,948,800 bytes. Memory cards usually measure in human scales, so 32,000,000 bytes available rather than megabytes (or the more modern, precise, and dumb sounding mebibytes), meaning you actually got pretty much the stated capacity on the card, which doesn't always happen.

 

[Ed in SoDak]

Late update: Card arrived pre-formatted and readable on my PC with TI-Dir. Who knows if the ebay IDE to CF adapter is compatible or not. The nano does not work however, makes the TI screen go black and that's all I can get.