Aspire One - 16G Compact Flash upgrade
March 14, 2009 – 4:24 pmI finally bought a ZIF flip cable, and that solved all my problems, as I expected it would. The BIOS recognized the 16G Sandisk Extreme III compact flash card, and the red led light on the card blinked instead of staying lit. All those were good signs that I could finally put away the slow 8G SSD.
The first order of business was then to make the CF adapter fit. I’ve seen various methods of installing the adapter, and they varied in what was cut away. Rather than cut a post, I chose to cut into the unneeded compartment. To do this, I used my dremel tool to cut a small slit into the side. I wasn’t trying to be very precise, and I was suprised that the height of the slit was exactly the same size as my adapter card. I had to widen the slit so that it’d fit, but that was easy. I also cut a small notch to clear the red led. I didn’t want the adapter to move around and bump the led. Finally, I glued a piece of plastic to the case to keep the adapter in place. It seems pretty solid now. I didn’t even have to add any padding to the top or bottom to keep it from rattling.
With the new card, the first thing I did was try to install the XP recovery disk. That went well, but that’ll be another post …
15 Responses to “Aspire One - 16G Compact Flash upgrade”
I’m having the same issue you were.
Red light on the compact flash board, and it’s not detecting in the BIOS.
What is a ZIF “flip” cable compared to a normal one?
Thanks.
By Lasivian on Apr 12, 2009
I think the normal one has both metal contacts on the same side. The flip cable has metal contacts on opposite sides. Or, it may be vice versa.
Regardless, if you look on http://aspireoneuser.com/forums, you’ll find people specifically selling ZIF flip cables. Buying one of these solved all my problems.
By admin on Apr 12, 2009
Hey, I’ve got an Extreme III too (the new faster model, ~30mb transfer speeds). Thing is, I finally got a flipside cable and I can copy files to the CF card just fine. The BIOS doesn’t recognize the CF card in the HDD: section at all, but it does show up as SanDisk in the boot menu. I tried installing XP on it from a USB stick, but it basically just hangs after the first boot (after copying files). It can’t find the boot sector/manager. Same thing happened with Ubuntu, install went fine, but couldn’t boot from it.
Any tips/ideas/etc?
By Dids on Apr 20, 2009
I don’t remember if mine showed up in the boot menu …
I was able to install the XP recovery disk, a full XP Pro disk, and also Ron’s TinyXP at various times (not concurrently).
I’d try Ron’s TinyXP to see if that works for you. In case it doesn’t work, you will not have wasted too much time since the install is small and the installation time is relatively short.
By admin on Apr 20, 2009
Hey again,
I actually had to use SanDisk’s own tool called ‘atcfwchg’, which basically allowed me to change it from removable device mode to fixed disk mode, so it’s now recognized in the BIOS.
I installed Ubuntu on it, and after rebooting and actually trying to boot the machine, it took me closer to 30 minutes to get to the desktop. I ran ‘hdparm -t /dev/sda’ to get the buffered disk read timings, and guess what I got? 1.33MB/sec!
I know, that’s way, waaaay too slow. So now I’m wondering whether it’s my cabling that’s faulty (as I did have to put some tape on it to make it stick in the adapter and not fall out), as that would basically lower the read speeds, when it would have do a ton of error correction.
Since you have the same card, I’m just wondering if you got good(ish) speeds from the very beginning, without doing any tweaks?
Just checking, as I couldn’t find any info on whether or not it should work on Aspire One or not.
By Dids on Apr 21, 2009
XP sees my card as a removable device. I think that’s somewhat peculiar, and I wonder how that affects things. One thing I noticed is that when I throw something away, it gets deleted immediately.
I wrote a post just before this where I have a graph of my speeds. The speed is as expected with larger files, but much slower with smaller files.
I left my pictures of my setup at the office. I’ll post them tomorrow. I have pictures of my card, how I cut the case to make it fit, and what my BIOS screen says. You can compare from there …
By admin on Apr 21, 2009
Thank you so much, those graphs help, so will the pictures of the setup.
The flipside ZIF cable I got basically had one end thinner than the other, so I had to add a layer of tape to the other end going to the CF adapter. That’s propably what’s causing the very, very low read speeds.
By Dids on Apr 21, 2009
The flipside cables come in two varieties. You definitely got the thinner one. I think one works with a Hitachi HD, while the other works with a Toshiba HD. In your case, yours is the thinner, but with the layer(s) of tape, it should clamp down securely onto the cable. You are passing the cable through that original rectangular block, right?
If you want to send me anything for testing, I’m willing to open up my system and test for you. I’m in San Diego …
By admin on Apr 21, 2009
Ah, I’ve completely forgotten about the block!
Does it have something to do with interference?
Going to find it and put it back once I get home from work, thanks for the reminder.
By Dids on Apr 21, 2009
I hope these pictures help.
By admin on Apr 22, 2009
What are your average read and write speed with this card
By Frank on Jun 7, 2009
http://overthis.com/2009/04/aspire-one-ssd-replacement-speeds/
By admin on Jun 7, 2009
the rectangular block is a ferrite, and has to do with interfereance
By foolishness on Jan 11, 2010
Managed to make a flip cable by folding (very carefully) the metal contacts at one end.
By r00kie on Jul 27, 2010
Hi,
It is a while from last post but anyway, maybe you can help me.
Do i need to format my CF to NTFS, FAT or what?
Or will it make any difference?
I have had problems with my adapter and cable. I ordered new adapter from DX as i think that it is not working. I have flip cable and new 300x CF card but when i connect adapter with CF to PC PC halts to first screen. I am not able to access to BIOS.
I hope that new adapater will fix this problem with flip cable.
By lassik on Oct 1, 2010