Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By DJ JEFF Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:18 pm
I thought this 1GB card was compatible but apparantly the screen says no floppy device when inserting the card..

Whut other brands besides Sandisk (1GB are becoming rare these days) are recommended for the XL?i'm getting frustrated buying the wrong cards,Transcend is also a no show.
By scsiforsamplers.com Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:35 pm
I don't know what kind of card reader you have but Sandisk cards are very compatible and have always worked in all the card readers I've sold and used. Transcend are problematic - that is why I quit selling those. But you should have no problem at all with a Sandisk.

If you get tired of having card problems and want to be able to use up to a 16GB CF card with your XL, we have the drive that will allow that and it's priced at $99.00 for mpc-forums members. See my sig...
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By DJ JEFF Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:52 pm
scsiforsamplers.com wrote:I don't know what kind of card reader you have but Sandisk cards are very compatible and have always worked in all the card readers I've sold and used. Transcend are problematic - that is why I quit selling those. But you should have no problem at all with a Sandisk.

If you get tired of having card problems and want to be able to use up to a 16GB CF card with your XL, we have the drive that will allow that and it's priced at $99.00 for mpc-forums members. See my sig...


I was talking about Kingston cards,not Sandisk..

The question was what other cards are compatible besides Sandisk as i find it harder to find cheap 1GB cards.

I recently installed a brand new internal IDE CF reader for $60 so buying another non swappable drive is adding up financially.

I'm about to selling 3 Iomega ZIP drives (1 internal,1 USB,1 external) + 30 100mb ZIP disks + SCSI cables,all working 100%.

Anyone interested hook me up before i put the lot on ebay.
By scsiforsamplers.com Sat Mar 13, 2010 12:03 am
Sorry I missed the Kingston in the title but I'd have to say the same thing about Kingston CF cards. We sell them and I have never had any problem getting them to work with any type of card reader. Have you tried formatting the card on your PC first in FAT format? The only wierdness I have seen on those cards is that I'd always have to format the Kingston 8GB CF card on my PC before trying to use it with the Adtron SSD units we used to sell. But once I did the FAT format, it worked fine for that Adtron as well as any card reader I used it with.
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By DJ JEFF Sat Mar 13, 2010 10:02 pm
stinktank wrote:Yeah, I had a 1 GB Kingston card I couldn't get to work (it had a picture of a flower on it). Never had a problem with my Sandisk CF cards.


Yep i also have the flower card..bad choice,i'll stick to Sandisk.
By mpc3000 Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:00 pm
scsiforsamplers.com wrote:The problem you have is limited to the IDE card reader. Our CF-CARD SCSI card reader drive can use the Kingston compact flash cards without any problems at all. In fact, we sell a lot of Kingston cards in several different capacities.



I agree. See below.

DJ JEFF wrote:I thought this 1GB card was compatible but apparantly the screen says no floppy device when inserting the card..


When an IDE reader is properly working you will not see any messages related to floppy.

And I have a bunch of Kingston flower cards here that work.
By scsiforsamplers.com Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:01 pm
Since I hate to see you guys stuck with these 1GB IDE card readers that often don't work, would there be any interest if I offered an IDE card reader trade-in program? What if I gave you a CF-CARD SCSI card reader drive capable of using CF cards up to 16GB in capacity for $49.00 to anyone who traded in their IDE card reader? You'd also have to reinstall the 1.14 os in your XL but that can be done using the IDE card reader you have now (or an external zip drive if you have one).

Would this trade-in offer be of interest to anyone who reads this board? ???
By scsiforsamplers.com Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:45 am
I had problems with the Transcend cards going bad. Just a few but that was enough to scare me off. They might work fine for you - my problems occurred more than a year ago and possibly they have figured out and fixed the problem since then. I'm kind of a "once bitten, twice shy" sort of guy. And no, that doesn't mean I'm a Great White fan, it means if a brand lets me down once, I'll probably stay away from that brand if possible in the future.
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By j rhodes Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:58 am
scsiforsamplers.com wrote:I had problems with the Transcend cards going bad. Just a few but that was enough to scare me off. They might work fine for you - my problems occurred more than a year ago and possibly they have figured out and fixed the problem since then. I'm kind of a "once bitten, twice shy" sort of guy. And no, that doesn't mean I'm a Great White fan, it means if a brand lets me down once, I'll probably stay away from that brand if possible in the future.



good looks on that... i have a few alternatives so i guess ill be backing them up alot...
By mpc3000 Fri Mar 19, 2010 12:36 pm
Brand and label mean little. Most CF manufacturers buy the flash chips and controllers from the lowest priced vendor, slap them together, and put their label on it. I developed a test suite that exercises cards for work since we use them in embedded devices. We found that the Kingston flower cards were just fine up until a couple years ago and then they changed the controller. This changed the behavior of the card and it failed our tests. They seem to still work fine in other devices (including the MPC's).

The edge stamp (or sometime back stamp) will usually match for like cards. It's pretty common to find different sets of numbers for even the same packaged card. This just means the manufacturer changes something. One may work and the other may not.

The lesson is that "make and size" is not enough to know whether a particular card will work. You have to reference the edge stamp on the card.

We are in the process of ditching consumer CF cards. Being a consumer item they are subject to whims of the market (like being cheaply made). Sometimes I feel like I'm reliving some of the crap I went through with Zips. Industrial cards are much better and the internals rarely change, but are much more expensive. Even better is OEM'ing any type of solid state drive, then the manufacture doesn't change the design at all.


If you want to know more about CF's:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... p?cid=6007