$5 card reader for your XL

I thought I would let you all know about a little experiment I chose to carry out....

Out of interest I thought I would try not to spend a silly amount of money on getting a CF card reader for my new XL.

So off to ebay I went... in the search box I typed "compact flash IDE" then brought the first adapter that came up on screen, it cost all of £3.50 inc postage.

After a few days the adapter arrived in the post. I then opened up the XL, got a standard IDE cable and plugged it into the XL IDE socket and the other end into the adapter. Then removed the floppy drive power cable and plugged it into the adapter...... inserted the CF card and booted up the XL ( OS 1.20 ) and BINGO, the XL recognized it!

It's not pretty but it works!

Can you please tell us the brand and exact model no of that drive you installed?

Nice work. Can you post a picture?

The card reader is so cheap and so nasty it isn't branded or have a model number. It's obviously an OEM product spat out from some factory in China.

Here is a link to the ebay auction, the guy must have lots of them.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Compact-Flash-to- ... 240%3A1318

The key things I looked for was a reader that connected directly to the IDE buss, was bootable and not hot-swappable. These type of devices are used all the time in embedded computers.

I'll post some pictures soon.

Thanks for the link man! I bought one just to see if it actually works. I let you know all about the results.

I just purchased an Xl, was looking to modify it in the same fashion. Pictures?
Does anyone know if this adapter will work?
http://www.b2cshop24.com/en/u-dual-cf-2x-compact-flash-to-ide-ata-adaptor-converter.html?language=en&currency=USD

Just by looking at the picture in the link it looks almost identical to the adapter I used. I think that it will work.

At 1.99 you don't really have much to lose if it doesn't!

I'll try to get some photos up over the weekend.

I tried such an adapter a while ago already, and it did not work in an XL.

I was not on 1.20 though.

Lol, and I just realize the stuff SMC sells for $35 is the same basically..

When I first installed the adapter I thought that I had already upgraded to 1.20.

I booted up the XL and it didn't work. I upgraded to 1.20 then it worked.

Yup...... it's just got a fancy bracket. You are paying 2 dollars for the adapter and 33 bucks for the bracket!

Go figure

Hopefully this dude will ship to the US.

He doesn't ship outside the EU.



Anyone want to buy two and I will pay you to ship it over here?

Is this the end of all the sellers of expesive card readers?

peace