Date   : Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:06:56 +0100
From   : jumbos.bazzar@... (Mark Haysman)
Subject: ADFS on a CF card

> Slightly off topic for a beeb, but....
>
> Can any of the programs that can read a BBC ADFS CF card, also read one 
> that
> is using a larger sector size. Ie. I have changed the IDE hard drive in a
> RISC PC 3.71 to a CF card. It is also formatted with ADFS, but I presume
> using the 512k sector size. Can any of these programs around cope with 
> this?

Hi.

The CF system is effectively an IDE interface, so will always use a 512 byte 
sector size, it's just that the CF system on the Beeb is only 8 bit, 
therefore it only uses 256 bytes, so the Beeb, and programs that read the 
Beeb CF formatted cards won't work. However, you might want to contact Jon 
Welch (jon@...) who wrote the transfer programs for me for the CF 
system, as I presume they already read the full 16 bit width, and just 
discard the top 8 bits when creating the .dat file, so a very minor 
modification to them would get them writing the full 512 byte sectors.

I must say I've not used the CF's on a RiscPC, but I have used them on other 
Arcs, like the A7000 down, and had mixed results. Certainly on various 
A5000s I keep getting write errors, with several different types of card. 
I've found the SD-IDE converters much more reliable, and much faster, 
although you do pay a bit extra for them.

Mark.