Re: CF Card Adapter White List Candidate

Robert, yes, the IDE socket missing pin was # 20, the Key needed for 80-conductor IDE cables, as you stated below.  I had to take the adapter out so I carefully looked at it and compared it to a photograph on a pin-out Internet site.

I also looked at an enlarged photo of the laptop CF card adapter pictured in URL03, and counted 44 pins - at least counting from the bottom of the socket.

I notice that the dmesg output in my Wednesday, January 5, 2011 11:33 PM email to you guys has been removed from you response below.  I realize that you need to keep emails shorter than those that I write, but I think that the dmesg demonstrates that my particular CF card adapter is indeed capable of being forced (libata.force=80c) to UDMA/66 even though it is not (economically) feasible to insert a 80-wire IDE cable between the CF card adapter and the IDE socket on a desktop computer's motherboard.

Robert, again thank you for helping me, and I hope that I may have contributed at least a little bit of useful information.

Tom

--- On Thu, 1/6/11, Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Robert Hancock <redacted>
Subject: Re: CF Card Adapter White List Candidate
To: "Tom Denchfield" <redacted>
Cc: "Tejun Heo" <redacted>, <redacted>
Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011, 10:22 PM
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Tom
Denchfield [off-list ref]
wrote:

quoted

The reason that I mentioned powering my CF adapter

with a floppy drive power plug is that the first time I
booted after inserting the adapter, I forgot to plug the
floppy drive power plug into the adapter.  The adapter's
power on LED did not light, and I think that Ubuntu did not
see the CF card.

quoted

The reason that I mentioned the pin that was

intentionally left out of the motherboard IDE socket was
that I thought that the missing pin might have had something
to do with needing to power the adapter with the floppy
drive power plug given my experience with forgetting to plug
the floppy power plug into the adapter as mentioned in the
previous paragraph.

quoted

The pin that is missing from the motherboard IDE

socket is very close to the middle of the IDE socket.  My
guess is that the pin is in the in the range #18 to #24. 
It is far away from pin #34.  I am going by memory here,
but I clearly remember that the missing pin is in the
middle.  Pin #34 is going into the CF card adapter when I
insert it.  I do not know whether pin #34 is grounded at
the mainboard.

If it's pin 20, that's a key pin that's always missing and
which has
the corresponding hole filled in on the cable side (from
compliant
connectors, anyway), to prevent plugging in the cable the
wrong way
around.

285 more quoted lines

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Tom Denchfield [off-list ref] wrote:

Robert, yes, the IDE socket missing pin was # 20, the Key needed for 80-conductor IDE cables, as you stated below.  I had to take the adapter out so I carefully looked at it and compared it to a photograph on a pin-out Internet site.

I also looked at an enlarged photo of the laptop CF card adapter pictured in URL03, and counted 44 pins - at least counting from the bottom of the socket.

I notice that the dmesg output in my Wednesday, January 5, 2011 11:33 PM email to you guys has been removed from you response below.  I realize that you need to keep emails shorter than those that I write, but I think that the dmesg demonstrates that my particular CF card adapter is indeed capable of being forced (libata.force=80c) to UDMA/66 even though it is not (economically) feasible to insert a 80-wire IDE cable between the CF card adapter and the IDE socket on a desktop computer's motherboard.

Yes, in this case there's likely no issue with using speeds faster
than UDMA33. However, problem is that since these kind of adapters are
essentially passive devices, there's no way for the kernel to detect
them automatically. In this sort of case, the libata.force option is
likely the best one.

298 more quoted lines