Hi everyone,
I want to report that I have success using the CF Aztecmonster (
http://www.artmix.com/CF_AztecMonster.html)
as an alternative to the ACARD AEC-7720U SCSI to IDE adapter.
The Aztecmonster is a direct SCSI to CF adapter. There is no requirement to purchase a IDE to CF adapter like if you use the AEC-7720U which is a SCSI to IDE adapter.
The Aztecmonster uses the same chipset made from ACARD. There was no jumper setting to set except the SCSI ID for your adapter. It comes set to SCSI ID 1 by default which was what I used. The SCSI termination is also set by default.
I couldn't find a 1GB compactflash so I simply used a 2GB Compactflash from Kingston which after formatting still gives me 1GB of space for 99 banks. The formatting was only a couple of seconds and immediately the EIII went into disk verification which took 3 hours plus maybe because I had a 2GB compactflash.
Before formatting on EIII, I partitioned the compactflash on my Apple Mac as a Macintosh drive with an Apple partition scheme (not GUID), reason being it seems alot of people have reported immediate success using hard drives from old Apple systems. I also seemed to have the "SCSI Hardware Error" problem if I don't do this.
Like some users, I couldn't do a "Save Bank" to create an empty bank, but I could do a "Copy Software" to copy the OS to the compactflash. I had to reboot the EIII which it polled about three times before it identified the compactflash and booted into it. Once it booted, I did a "Save Bank" to create and empty bank.
I now have a working EIII with compactflash as an internal harddrive. The EIII still takes a couple of turns polling the SCSI devices before booting into the compactflash.
I hope this helps with anyone who is looking into an alternative compactflash solution. The seller of the compactflash adapter also lists them on EBAY. Just do a search for AZTECMONSTER.
The mounting is also quite easy to mount in the harddrive space, so it sits quite securely there.
Cheers.
MIKE.
Author