Old CF cards

[BiggestNizzy]

There are a few IT wizards on here and I am looking for some help in sourcing old CF cards, I have a machine tool that will not accept anything but a 16-bit compact flash formatted with a cluster size less than 15.(or a floppy disk) I can't find these for love nor money.

Any idea's where I can source them or a way to get past it?

[graeme]

If you've got a pic of the old card, that would help massively, or if you can see the size of the card in MB, that would help.

Are you sure cluster size isn't less that 15k?

If you've got the manual you got that info from too, that would help... scan or pdf or even the machine type.

[BiggestNizzy]

If you've got a pic of the old card, that would help massively, or if you can see the size of the card in MB, that would help.

The card we have that works is 6 or 7 years old and now has nothing on it.

Are you sure cluster size isn't less that 15k?

No Idea, the bloke on nightshift formatted an existing on using dos but he couldn't get the cluster size less than 50 (In truth I have no idea what is meant by cluster size)

If you've got the manual you got that info from too, that would help... scan or pdf or even the machine type.

The machine is a Mazak E500 circa 2006/2007, I think it runs win 2000 behind the Mazatrol front end. I will dig about and see what I can find.
I got the info from the bloke on nightshift, He got it from a forum that I can't find.

[graeme]

OK, see what you can find.

Another idea, there are floppy drive emulators which are used to swap out old 3.5" drives and replace them with a USB key slot which pretends to be a floppy disk, which might be worth a punt if you've got physical access to the floppy to replace it. Would possibly require a driver to be installed... not sure, never used on, but might be worth a punt.

Another idea, phone Mazak and ask what the recommended upgrade is?

[steve_weegie]

Is this the puppy?

http://www.themazatroladvantage.com/history/hist-1.html

Do you have any access to the windows GUI or command line on these machines? If it's a std PC behind the scenes, there will be a way to make it work. Oh, also you might find that the hard disk it's using for booting up might be a little old now. Have you thought about imaging it in case of disaster?

[JohnStewart]

Ebay has these which match the photo in the link above: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SanDisk-2G-1G ... 2a47a5fbd4

[BiggestNizzy]

Is this the puppy?

http://www.themazatroladvantage.com/history/hist-1.html

Do you have any access to the windows GUI or command line on these machines? If it's a std PC behind the scenes, there will be a way to make it work. Oh, also you might find that the hard disk it's using for booting up might be a little old now. Have you thought about imaging it in case of disaster?

Machines have mazatrol matrix control, Mazak don't seem to bother with an upgrade path (sodick were worse they charged £500 for a special floppy disk drive) the newer machines have USB as well as compact flash.

I have also asked IT to make copy's of the hard disks as replacemnents are £1500 with a 5 day delivery from Japan - they haven't botrhered!

[steve_weegie]

If you've got a card that works, I'd be happy to have a look and see what can be done. Might be a way you can butcher an SD card with linux to get it in the appropriate format.

I have an old 512Mb card kicking around too, that's good for only about 10 photos in my digital camera. Happy to donate it if needs be, because half a gig doesn't cut much mustard in the storage world these days!

[pjlarge]

There is a relationship between the max cluster size and partition size but this is all so long ago I don't remember the specifics.

What I'd do though is partition a larger card down into smaller partitions - then you should be able to format the primary partition using the FORMAT command at a command prompt with a /A:xxx switch to set the right allocation unit size. FORMAT /? will be your friend here.

Phil.

[pete]

I've a CF to SD adaptor sitting here if that's any use?

[robin]

Phil's idea should work - if you take a bigger CF card and just overwrite it with the image from the smaller one it might work OK.

Also Linux tends to be able to force formats onto things that Windows et al might not allow you to do ... for example formatting a modern card with a tiny layout.

Cheers,
Robin

[Ferg]

I have a USB 3.5" floppy drive if you felt you could format a disk such that the machine would read from it. Any use?

[robin]

P.S. A cluster is a collection of sectors. A sector is (almost) always 512 bytes (since 1970s) and is smallest unit you can read/write from/to a disk.

Assuming your equipment is "from the 80s" and given you reference floppy disks I assume that's the smaller solid plastic type of floppy disk. These are 1.44megabytes capacity and are typically formatted using FAT12 which uses 8kbyte clusters (that being 16 sectors).

So when you say cluster size of 15, I wonder if that's really 16 and thus 16 sectors = 8kbyte?

Anyway, if that's what's really required I am 99% certain that any old (or new) CF disk can be formatted with FAT12 and appear like a 1.44megabyte floppy to the CNC machine controller.

We probably have the right adapter in the office to access these (we still support some old equipment that uses these, though it's a while since I've seen one!!). If you want to post me one, I'll format is as FAT12 and send it back to you ..

Cheers,
Robin

[pete]

I've a CF to SD adaptor sitting here if that's any use?

That should be SD to CF. ie It is a CF card with a slot to take SD (or MMC - that's how old it is).

[Corranga]

What is the capacity of the CF card?

Does anyone know if there was ever an architectural change in CF cards, similar to SD vs SDHC?