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CF Card Readers?

stephengilbert

Active member
What's up with CF card readers? It appears that there are few, if any, firewire readers available. Are they waiting for a change to USB 3? Any suggestions for a fast firewire 800 reader?

Edit: A partial answer to my own question: I just called Hoodman, and they described the readers as "out of stock," implying that something was coming, maybe a new model.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
I'm still using the Sandisk Extreme FW reader -- it is about 2x as fast as the fastest USB reader I have found.
 

stephengilbert

Active member
Jack,

I couldn't find one. There appear to be none in stock, even if you click that box up there. ^ I have the older version (SD and CF/FW), but it is said to be slower than the most recent Sandisk product (CF only).

Steve
 

weinschela

Subscriber Member
I just bought one of these. Works very well and a fair price:

<http://www.synchrotech.com/products/card-rw_31_firewire_800_1394b_compactflash_cffire800.html>
 

MrSlezak

New member
A few years back, I worked with both of the companies that make 80%(+) of the bridge chips for storage to BUS. They both tended to have a high end chip and mass market chipsets. From what I recall the only customers who bought the higher end chips also manufactured flash memory. The bulk of their other chips were sold something like this 70% to card assemblies for computers (card readers with Expresscard/PCMCIA card slots over USB) 20% as loose to card reader makers and 10% as overrun buffer and sold as such.

It will be interesting to see what Intel does with the three horses they have in the external BUS race, as I am not sure I can see the corp. investment going forever on USB 3.0, eSATA and LightPeak/Thunderbolt - I would think one of those needs to go away as they all sorta compete for the same type of business (e.g. bulk transfer with USB & LP/TB offering some Ansyc).

Interesting times...
 

David Schneider

New member
The USB 3 card readers are out and if you have USB3, speeds are suppose to be something like 10x faster. Is there a reasonably inexpensive way to upgrade to USB3 or is it new computer time?
 

weinschela

Subscriber Member
The USB 3 card readers are out and if you have USB3, speeds are suppose to be something like 10x faster. Is there a reasonably inexpensive way to upgrade to USB3 or is it new computer time?
If you are using a laptop I think you've got to get a new one -- but for desktops there are probably boards with USB3 out there -- or will be soon. Of course, on the Mac side, Steve has decided on his own high speed connection, so who knows when usb3 for mac will be out there (other than maybe macpro). I think it is going to take some time for the dust to settle on a new standard.
 

MrSlezak

New member
It's good to note, USB 3.0 support will require three pieces:

-- Card reader
-- Host controller
-- Operating System support

the last one is the part not on the market. Last I checked neither Apple or Microsoft offer USB 3.0 support in OS X or Windows 7. Could be a disti of Linux that does, not sure.

But hardware w/out drivers and stack sorta like a placebo effect on speeds - it might do something, but not as much as you'd want.

I should also note, the way USB is designed to work is it off loads each transaction to the CPU to do part of the processing. When Apple or Microsoft release support, it should be with an eye to older CPUs and overall performance impact of a USBStor transfer to the rest of your system. At least what I’ve seen from 3rd party stacks – while they are first to market for to offer OS support for hardware, it isn’t as complete as waiting is. Perf and impact may vary quite a bit from system to system… With over a billion USB devices out there, there is also the backwards compatible issue to consider with 3rd party stacks; might not be an issue, but who knows…
 
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