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OG Xbox Forums => Hardware Forums => General Hardware/Technical Chat => Topic started by: shambles1980 on June 13, 2012, 10:30:00 AM

Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: shambles1980 on June 13, 2012, 10:30:00 AM
It all depends on the adapter..

if the adapter cant emulate jumper settings (slave/master) then your probably out of luck.
but even if it does emulate the jumper settings i cant guarantee it will work at all..
Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: shambles1980 on June 13, 2012, 01:04:00 PM
the xbox is limited to ata-100 controller. so you wont ever get faster than 100Mb's
The size is all dependant on what you are going to want to put on there. but a minimum of 8gb would be recomended, thats should give you a few Gb free to add a game or  2, 16Gb would leave a reasonable ammount of space.
I would normaly recomend a minimum of 160Gb

I am assuming that you will be tsop flashing or chipping the box, because i some how doubt that a cf card can be locked like an ata drive.
Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: shambles1980 on June 13, 2012, 03:30:00 PM
off the top of my head there is about 4gb free on E with a stock 8Gb drive..
Not 100% on that as i rarley leave a stock drive in for more than a few mins.. But I think thats about right..
transfer of 90 would probably be about as fast as you could hope to manage on an xbox any way.
But the standard xbox ide cable is limited to ATA 33.. (40 wire)
So if your using that cable then theres no point trying to get 90MB out of anything, you would need an ide 80 cable to get the speeds out of it.

hard drive speeds are rated by there type and basically are ..
Ata-100 "100MB"
ata 133 "133MB"
sata "150MB"
sata 2 "300MB"
sata 3 "600MB"
Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: shambles1980 on June 13, 2012, 08:20:00 PM
QUOTE

person A and person B have the exact same system same hard disk same everything.. "this is assuming the ide hard disks are ata-100 or faster"

But person A has a 40 wire ribbon cable and  Person B has an 80 wire cable..

they both Ftp the exact same copy of halo 2 from the same computer to there xboxes..

person A and person B both start the game at the exact same time.
Person B's game finishes loading 2-3 seconds before person A's game
this improvemnt came by removing the bottle neck caused by a 40 wire cable and replacing it with an 80 wire cable.

the diference would be more noticable with a larger load with the maximum possible improvemnt being 66% faster, although in reality we would most likley enjoy 40-50% faster load times.


i think that covers it all..

but yeah basics are..
if your soldering directly then you will "more than likley" be limited to 33Mb's so theres no point geting a faster cf card. (im not sure exactly how much of the corsstalk would be eliminated by having no wires for the crosstalk to be able to compromize the data traveling, and thats why i say more than likley.)

if you want to get the most out of your hardware you may want to think about making a custom 80 wire ata cable, (or atleast trimming down an existion one so it only has one connector.)
and
the xbox is ata 100, limited by the cheapo wire.
Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: pattythefatty on June 14, 2012, 05:15:00 PM
QUOTE
Ok so the 80 ribbon is basically a shielded version. If i were to connect the data lines via fine coax cable, with their shielding connected to ground, that would give the same effect right?


As for the 40 vs 80, you can't just ground the 40 wire some way.  The purpose of the 80 isn't just grounding, it also is for physical separation and isolation.  But it is all really moot since you will be using a CF adapter plugged directly into the MB.  Not sure why you would want to go to the trouble of soldering directly, but I am sure you have your reasons.  I have done it two ways, buy a male ide/cf adapter and plug directly to the onboard adapter, and I have also used a female cf/ide adapter with a trimmed down stubby ide cable, which allowed me to get the CF into a Slim mod I made (as the male adapter standing straight up was too tall to fit the slim mod.  Obvioulsly, this method would allow the use of an 80wire cable... hint hint...

And as for the noticeable speed difference between a 40/80, well i can't say as I can see a difference, but I am not normally the person that sees that stuff.  (I don't see fluorescent lights flicker, I can't see rainbow effects on DLP TV,s, etc. etc...)  But there are people that say it is technically faster and I am not saying that it isn't, I am just saying that I cant see it.
-PTF


Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: pattythefatty on June 14, 2012, 07:08:00 PM
Sorry, I put some misinformation in my previous post.  I was at work and couldn't verify my memory.  When I got home, I looked at my system and checked my notes.  I had tried a 133x card, and I could not get that to work with XBMC.  It did work fine with Avalaunch, but I never got working correctly with XBMC.  Since I had to go buy a new card at that point, I bought the fastest one I could afford at the time which was a 266x (~40MB/Sec).  XBMC runs great on it, so it might work at 200x or 233x, i never tried those.  It does work great on 266x.

IPB Image
Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: StrictPuppet on June 14, 2012, 09:59:00 PM
It was discussed a long time ago in this thread, although it seems that faster cards are now available and may work as Patty has mentioned.

http://forums.xbox-s...howtopic=646202

Fyi that zune drive still works in the box I put it in, although the xbox no longer gets used all that much.

Title: Compact Flash As Hdd?
Post by: alpha_prime on June 15, 2012, 03:13:00 AM
Thanks for all the information! I was planning on getting a 400x CF, so it should work alright :-)