PowerBook 1400 - Replacing the internal HDD with a CF card

[AphoticD]

The sub-$10 passive CF Card to 44pin IDE adapter arrived for my PowerBook 1400 and I have yet to get the Mac to recognize a CF card as a device (in Drive Setup, etc) when installed internally.

I am able to make a bootable CF card, pop it in the 16-bit PC Card/PCMCIA slot and startup the Mac this way...

The 44pin CF adapter works fine when connected to my newertech USB universal drive adapter, so I have confirmed the adapter is not faulty. In order for the device to show up on the desktop when connected via USB like this, I need to set the onboard jumpers to Slave.

The CF cards I have tried so far;
128MB Lexar 4X CF ‘01
1GB SanDisk Ultra II CF ‘03
2GB SanDisk Extreme III CF ‘04

I tested these in the 44pin IDE adapter (with either Master or Slave setting) in the PB1400, a PBG3 PDQ, PBG3 Pismo and a TiBook G4, all with the same result- not recognized.

I read online that in some configurations, a CF card needs to be UDMA capable to be bootable on the IDE bus... Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing? @bunnspecial?

Thanks in advance,
-D

 

[LightBulbFun]

aye a lot of older CF cards will only operate in PIO mode (aka how it works when you stick it in a PCMCIA slot)

you need something a little bit more modern, that supports DMA for it to work on the main ATA bus of a macintosh

also id not rule out the adapter just yet, which adapter did you get? I have found some CF card adapters may work well in one system or setup but not in another

I have a couple of this style and they work very well with my 16GB Sandisk Ultra CF card

 

[tex210]

My Powerbook 1400 is jealous at the thought of this.

 

[AphoticD]

aye a lot of older CF cards will only operate in PIO mode (aka how it works when you stick it in a PCMCIA slot)

you need something a little bit more modern, that supports DMA for it to work on the main ATA bus of a macintosh

also id not rule out the adapter just yet, which adapter did you get? I have found some CF card adapters may work well in one system or setup but not in another

I have a couple of this style and they work very well with my 16GB Sandisk Ultra CF card

View attachment 860288

Thanks @LightBulbFun, that’s the one I bought. Ok, so I’ll source a more recent CF card and keep these oldies as bootable installers for the PC Card slot.

@tex210, give that old ‘book an upgrade!