Does anybody know how to remove unwanted disk images from a CFFA3000 disk emulator in a IIGS? They just keep accumulating. Also, how can I put them in folders?
Thanks in advance for the assistance.
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If you are using a USB stick, simply put it in your PC and organize the files from there. If you are using a CF card, you might not have a PC adapter for it, so it's better to use a microSDtoCF adapter with a microSD card, which is also very easy to connect and organize using a PC.
I got this one from AliExpress and it works perfectly with my CFFA3000 card: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000603511452.html
There are hundreds of commercially available multi-card readers (that read SD, CF, etc) that have a USB cord on the market at places like Best Buy and such.
Usually they're less than $20
The CF card is formatted FAT-32 so manipulating images on it is easy, although you might not want to organize them according to folders (or else the CFFA might not find them properly) and just pare down your list of titles.
Or do what I do and have multiple CF cards.
Like one for action games, one for RPGs, one for Total Replay, one for utilities, one for AppleWorks, etc...
Small storage capacity ones like 128 MB and 256 MB are super cheap on ebay. I recently bought a pack of 5 used SanDisk 128 MB CF cards from an ebay vendor for $30.
Oh. I just thought there would be some way to do it directly without removing the CF card. Thanks anyway.
For easy removal, I suggest to use a USB stick with a USB extension cable, so the USB stick is accessible from the outside when the lid is closed.
Actually the CFFA3000 is best designed for that, since you can simulate removing and inserting a different diskette into a floppy drive by simply removing and inserting a different USB stick, which has seen previously assigned a different disk image. The CFFA3000 card knows how to differentiate them and remembers which disk image has been assigned to which USB stick.
I do use a USB stick on an external cable, so that's no problem.
However, I have another related question which doesn't seem to be covered in the manual: can I use the CFFA3000 Disk ][ emulation AND a real disk ][ device plugged into the onboard disk port? If so, what are the slot assignments?
Yes, the CFFA Disk II controller can be assigned to any slot between 4 and 7.
To run a full slate of devices you could use these assignments:
- Slot 4: CFFA Disk II
- Slot 5: GS SmartPort
- Slot 6: GS Disk II
- Slot 7: CFFA SmartPort
If you don't need the bulit-in SmartPort driver (you're not using an external 3.5" drive or RAM disk) you could assign the CFFA Disk II to slot 5 instead. Whichever slot you use, remember to set that slot to "Your Card" in the GS control panel.
Actually it's from 1 to 7 for Disk ][, as long as the slot is empty. If the SmartPort is enabled, it can only be assigned to the slot the CFFA3000 is in. However if not using SmartPort, you can assign Disk ][ to the slot in which the CFFA3000 is in, so it doesn’t use an extra slot.
It amazes me that almost 20 years after its initial release and with so many other newer alternatives, the CFFA card is still the best at what it does.
Small correction - the CFFA3000 was released in July/August 2011 - so that makes it about 13 years old (as at the time of writing). The original CFFA card appears to have been released around April 2002, making it over 22 years old (at the time of writing). FYI: I have both of these cards and they are great, however the CFFA3000 is still king of the hill in my mind.
The CFFA3000 may not be the fastest card out there (due to no DMA support), but IMHO it more than makes up for that with its feature set.
Cheers,
Mike
You're right - I was looking at 2.0, which was released in 2006, instead of 1.2, which is from 2002.
Not sure what you are comparing it to, but I have compared it to my Dan ][ Controller and my T.J.Boldt ProDOS card using the same SmartPort image and it is just as fast in loading both ProDOS and Karateka. It appears to boot slower, but this is only because of the "Press M for menu" delay.
The CFFA3000 is no match for any of the storage cards with DMA. For example:
All of the cards listed above would be considerably faster than the CFFA3000 due to them having DMA support. But for cards that don't support DMA, I would expect that the CFFA3000 would have to be one of the fastest (if not the fastest). It is certainly way faster than any of the Smartport based offerings which are limited by the Smartport protocol throughput. Don't get me wrong though, I love the Smartport offerings too, but in a speed comparison - well, there really is no comparison. :-)
Cheers,
Mike
Actually the CFFA3000 can reach almost 7 times the SmartPort API speed and get pretty close to DMA speeds with some advanced software techniques, which were presented at KansasFest 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WoRX3TxSmY
Not sure if these techniques were ever utilized to improve the storage device speeds, or if they were limited to manipulating the memory in order to play videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tHenz0oU-4