On the heels of the email that just went out about the cffa300 being delayed for another year, I was wondering what people thought of the HDD card at 16sector.
The reviews on the site are not so hot 3 stars of 43 and or 1 star in 115
http://16sector.com/shop/featured/focus-ide-hd-controller/
This would be going in the IIGS
your thoughts?
J
Does *A*N*Y*B*O*D*Y*...
...use the search feature before someone posts a question?
http://www.applefritter.com/content/focus-ide-controller
jrubin,
What is all the Bru-ha about?
The last CFFA3000 run was out of stock within a month after it arrived.
Rich said then that the next batch would be Spring 2015.
So please explain this "email" you're talking about
and why all the Hoopla?
Steven
Waiting list folks received an email yesterday with regard to the new batch being delayed till at least nov 2015
Yup, received the same mail. One more year...
This is not the first time that Rich has delayed a run.
It probably won't be the last.
Making the CFFA cards is a side business/hobby for him.
He also works and has a family to support.
All things being equal, if I were him, with as much as he has going on,
I probably might have delayed too.
All good things take time.
Steven
There is this: http://www.applefritter.com/content/interesting-device
I and at least one other person on this board (protek) have one. They come out in batches of 5 or so fairly frequently and sell quickly. I recommend it as a capable and inexpensive alternative. protek has opened a dialog with Ian, the designer and may be able to get you information on next availability.
There is also the MicroDrive Turbo. I bought mine off the US seller on eBay, but you may have to contact him directly through http://www.ReactiveMicro.com. His name is Henry Courbis and he is one the the best people in the world to deal with.
BillO,
I have been in contact with Ian for over a month now.
He has me on his list to be notified.
Nishida Radio's UNISDISK is probably the most capable device after the CFFA3000.
I have also Unisdisk. That'll work as a virtual hard drive with IIGS and GSOS although the speed may not be as fast as it connects through smart port rather than slot. "Interesting device" works with the IIGS but for the time being you're restricted to 8-bit operating systems. GSOS won't load from that. Ian's working on it but it may take time as he doesn't have a IIGS (yet).
One thing with Unisdisk is that you can't daisy chain it with your floppy drive. I've tested that and it has also been confirmed to me by Koichi, the developer. Unisdisk does support multiple virtual devices though.
Since you were looking at the Focus IDE controller, then I'm guessing that floppy disk emulation that the CFFA provides is optional for you. In that case, a more expensive (but better, in my opinion) setup is getting a SCSI card plus any of the SCSI-IDE or SCSI-CF/SD solutions. The SCSI card can eventually be used with other SCSI peripherals like CD-ROM drives, MO drives, Zip/Jaz drives, or 20MB floptical drives. And the SCSI-IDE or SCSI-CF/SD mechanism could also be used with other retro-computers to replace those loud SCSI drives.
I've a great experience with the SCSI2SD http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD (can be purchased, but it's open source, so you can make your own if you want to go that route). Although it doesn't provide loading and switching between multiple disk images, like the CFFA does, you can still "image" the microSD card and load files into it using CiderPress.
Pitz,
The item in your post looks very interesting.
Could be used in Power PC units.
Hmmmm....
Steven
Thanks for sharing this, I did not know these were available. I think I'm going to buy one and try it out.