I'm looking for some suggestions on ways to get the benefits of an SSD without doing a full disk replacement in a laptop. I have two configuration that I would like to improve. Both have Core 2 Duo CPUs with maxed ram (2-4 Gig) which is reasonable for their typical usage.
One of them has a really slow (4200 RPM) 1.8" PATA drive and generally runs Windows. I have had no luck in finding reasonably priced SSDs for that form factor so I'm looking for alternatives. My first try was to make use of the built-in SD slot with Microsoft's ReadyBoost software. It does work (and helps). Unfortunately, it seems like the SD card is via an incredibly slow interface (USB? maybe) and no matter what SD card I put into it, it does something like 5 MByte/sec. on reads. The other machine has a large (640 gig) SATA drive which is 90% full, runs Linux, and for economic reasons isn't going to be replaced with a SATA SSD (and no SD card slot). Both machines, however, have CardBus slots. Given that CardBus is essentially a 32bit PCI bus connection, that means theoretically up to 132 Mbytes/sec. Can anybody suggest a CardBus solution to access flash-based storage? (Perhaps a SD or CompactFlash adapter?) I've looked around and haven't been able to find anything. I have found a PCMCIA adapter which lets you plug CompactFlash cards into a CardBus slot. This works because CompactFlash is 16 bit PCMCIA compatible with a simple adapter. My testing seems to indicate that this is much too slow to be of any practical use. I'm hoping for a CardBus adapter card in the $30-$60 dollar range into which I can plug my own storage (SD or CompactFlash). Suggestions? Thanks, Bill Bogstad _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
