Compact Flash card compatibility
Compact Flash cards - tweaking for speed VS capacity
When I record audio directly to a CF card, it clicks upon playback?
Can I use a CF card modem/Bluetooth/GPRS adapater/magic tinsel emitter...
Compact Flash card compatibility
CF cards bring a whole new dimension to the use of a Psion PDA. Not only can you use them to extend the data storage capacity of your device, you can install applications on them to keep your C drive free to use as memory for running applications. But it ain't all a bed of roses...
First of all, there are some brands and capacities of CF card that simply are not compatible with Psion PDAs. To complicate matters, third-party branding of cards means that it can be very difficult to tell which cards will or will not work. The best solution is to establish that the vendor has a sound sale or return policy before you buy one.
Alex Skilton maintains a list of known incompatible brands/capacities. Visit his site to add your own findings. There's another site here, with loads of other info about the CF format, but it been a while since the compatibility list has been updated.
Personally, I have found DanData cards to be bad in general (they are known to use an incompatible controller chip), and both Hitachi and SimpleTech to be very good. Here's some more detailed info from Mike Woodward:
I support quite a few PDA users as well as using a Netbook & 5mx, so I have tried quite a few CF cards, from 8 to 256MB, as well as using then on my portable PC & digital camera. Summary below.
- Simple (8, 16, 64, 128 & 256MB) - Cheap but very slow
- Dane-Elect (256MB) - Cheap, fast, perfect on 5mx, but unable to write warnings on Netbook
- Viking (256MB) - Expensive, even faster & works on Netbook
There is a significant speed variation between CF cards, for example, pressing TAB to display all the files on a 256MB card.
- 256MB Simple - 4 minutes
- 256MB Dane-Elect - 1 minute 15 seconds
- 256MB Viking - 1 minute
This URL links to a site which has tested a range of CF cards, the figures are not directly comparable as they are testing with digital cameras, which use sequential read/write, which flatter the IBM disk types.
Compact Flash cards - tweaking for speed VS capacity
Warning - this section is a bit technical! If you are happy with your CF cards as they are, then leave well enough alone. If however, you like your machine to be tweaked to the max, read on..
EPOC PDAs format CF cards using a FAT12 structure. They will however, read and write CF cards that have been formatted using most any FAT size. Varying the format structure allows you to trade off read and write speeds against disk capacity. Essential Disk Utilities from Atelier allows you to format CFs using alternative format structures.
For very comprehensive information about the pros and cons of doing this, please visit Martin Guthrie's site at http://www.pscience5.net/Hints_Tips/Compact_Flash.htm.
When I swap CF cards, I get an 'E32AppArcServer' error and then 'Not Found' when I try to run applications?
This error relates to having applications stored on CF card. I used to habitually get these errors when switching between my 'applications' CF card and my 'backup' CF card. There are two ways to fix it.
When I record audio directly to a CF card, it clicks upon playback?
This usually only occurs with large CF cards - 256MB and above. Simply put, the card's built-in controller cannot write the data as fast as Record is sending it. Your only recourse is to use a different card.
Can I use a CF card modem/Bluetooth/GPRS adapater/magic tinsel emitter...
No, no, and thrice no. And no again. Psion's PDAs have a Type-I CF slot that can only talk to memory cards.
Page last updated: December 6, 2002