HDR Mod

[Old School]

Hi All,
Recently on Ebay I saw a couple of HDR's that had been modified with usb mouse and keyboard slots on the back and also a cf card slot which could be used to reload the operating system. It was late at night when I stumbled across them and the next day the listings were gone. Does anyone know of someone who does this mod? I was going to contact the seller to see if he had a kit for sale for the mod. Also I remember it said that the firmware he had would play nice with sata lll. This makes me wonder if the listings were pulled because of a complaint about intellectual property infringement. ( I have never understood how it's ok for me to put a different carburetor on my car, but not to improve on a software program that I paid for). Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this please let me know.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W

[arjepsen]

I am using a CF-ide adapter in both my d8b and HDR.
But I don't think it works with SATA3.
Can't tell for sure about the usb thing.

Anyways, if you want to go for the CF, I can probably help you out with advice. I'm already trying to help Bruce out with that and the floppy emulator

[Old School]

The CF slot on this particular machine was not for use as its master hard drive, but rather an OS loader, making reloading your OS ( from the CF disk he included with the unit ) a painless snap, no floppies needed. Need to install a new HD? No problem, just use his handy dandy CF slot. This is why I was intrigued with it. I should have bought it when I saw it, but didn't want to spend $700 if he would sell me a kit. Plus the usb mouse and keyboard inputs would be handy too. He claimed that this unit would play nice with a sata lll SSD as well. Oh well, maybe he'll post it here.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W.

[arjepsen]

Hmm... I don't quite trust the sata3 thing, and I don't think there would be any speed gain in these machines from that.... and also I'm sceptic about having both mouse and keyboard on usb...
The "OS-loader" thing also sounds a bit weird to me (sorry for me being such a sceptic).
What IS easier with a CF solution, is that you can simply take the CF - plug it into a regular pc, and backup or restore the drive.

[Old School]

Hi,
Oh I'm a believer in the CF for the D8B, and I have one in mine, but I don't trust the reliability of a CF card for recording projects to. I have been persuaded by people who know more than me that I would risk losing data. My operation is for profit and I would sustain a substantial loss if I lost someone's project. I have been in business since 2003 and have never lost a project using regular hard drives or SSD's. Sure, I've had some fail, but recovering files was always pretty simple with those kinds of media(did it myself). The other stuff you mention, I was skeptical as well (probably why I didn't just buy it), but now I'm wondering why a guy would list something like that if it wasn't as advertised EBAY would refund the money and he would get nothing. If I have been misled about the reliability of a cf card, please tell me as I respect your opinion and am ignorant of the workings of storage media.

Have a blessed day,
Mike W.

[arjepsen]

I wont claim to be an expert on the reliability of cf cards.
I haven´t had problems with reading/writing n my cards, but then again I´m not doing this for a living, (wish I could) so my systems havent been thoroughly stress-tested.
I remember reading about reliability of cf cards and also ssd´s in different articles, I think the conclusion was that they would work fine for over 10 years before any reliability issues could start to pop up.
I still think cf cards are so easy to work with when you can just plug and unplug them, making backups a breeze.
But of course your situation call more for tried and true relibility

[Bruce Graham]

Hey Mike and Anders;

I thought I'd jump in and give my 2 cents.

Mike, I was hoping to us CF's in the removable bay. Anders has discovered that using the removable bays doesn't work with the CF. They will only format as "backups". They may work in the bay, but the CF has to be directly connected via IDE cable the secondary HD port. This has yet to be proven absolutely to be the case. More to come on that.

He has, and I am going to, change the primary HD, with the OS on it, to be record-able. It doesn't mean I will stop using Removable Media, but I am finding it hard to get SATA 1 & 2 SSD's, and the mechanical drives are going to fail. So I was looking for other options.

Like Anders, I do this for fun so we don't have the pressure that you have, but for very little money for a CF Card reader and a 32gb CF, it is, to me, worth giving a chance. Once recorded on the CF I can back up to a removable Drive (SSD or Mechanical) in the HDR, AND pop it out and backup to a PC. Plus.. if you put the OS on a few CF you can just through another in and be ready to go. Note: I know there is a bit more to it as far a Templates and preferences go, but it is worth thinking about).

Anyway there is a lot to learn and experiment with but it could prolong the use of the HDR.

If anyone knows where to get SSD's that are SATA 1 or 2, could you let us know! As I am not having much luck.

That's it from Canada for now!

Thanks
Bruce

[arjepsen]

I actually *think* that the whole reliability thing is a leftover from the first ssd drives.
When I went on a mission to change the hard drive in my desktop pc to a ssd, I did read up quite a bit on the reliability of various drives. In the end, I ended up buyng a samsung 850 pro. However, I did read some article where somebody made the point, that a samsung 850 evo (and actually most modern ssd's) could easily last reliably for 10+years. In the same amount of time, a regular mechanical hard drive might also fail. I think current CF's are sort of the same technology as ssd's (correct me if I'm wrong).
I'm also wondering how reliable old 120gb hardrives are toady. I've been across a few HD's below 32gb in all my fiddlings with the d8b and HDR, and several of those were dead.
However, just to point it out, the main reason for me to go the CF route was to cut down on noise from these machines, and also making backup and reinstallings faster and easier.

Just for public information:
I did test the second IDE port in my HDR, like Bruce mentioned.
When I connected the CF -IDE adapter "inside" the removable drive caddy, it worked, but wouldn't verify as a recording media, claiming the transfer speed wasn't high enough.
When I connected the adapter straight to the motherboards second ide port, it verified just fine. This was with two different brands of CF-IDE adapter (one is startech, the other DeLock), and a 128gb sandisk extreme card.

[Gary Stone]

Those were my machines on eBay. I've kind of gotten away from the CF mod and am using a dual SSD bay that goes where the floppy drive was mounted. The CF slot was mainly used for system restore (NO FLOPPIES) and for project backup/transfer.

email me if you're interested in a mod kit or having me mod you MDR/HDR for you. Thanks!!

garyjostone@gmail.com

For some reason, I'm not getting notifications by email on this forum's posts. How do I fix that?

[funk]

Hi Mike, Not sure about the usb mouse, i have tried that, got nowhere im still on that one,
But can confirm a WIRELESS keyboard will work fine for usb, even in pre HDR screen for bios settings.
Im using one on my main hdr right now.
can give settings and photos if needed.