Would Solid State Drive be good for Mame to Jamma rig?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Are those "Solid State Drives" (that replace a HDD on a standard PC tower setup) pretty reliable these days since they have no moving parts (like a HDD does)?

And would it be a good idea to use such Solid State Drive in a Mame to Jamma rig? Or would using a Compact Flash card be better instead?

Thanks for your help fellow shmuppers...

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[wrdaniel]

Both, SDD or CompactFlash, should be a good solution. No noise, shock resistant, and a mame rig has not many writing cycles, so no problems with the limited writing cycles of such systems. (which are by far less a problem as many say). i'm using 2x8GB CF cards in my laptop, an IBM X40 where normally only a 1,8" hdd fits, so the CF cards are a good alternative. Booting such systems is also really fast, cause the random access for reading is very low.

[Ed Oscuro]

Solid State is still too expensive. Save yo money.

Noise and shock aren't going to matter when the thing's buried deep within a MAME cabinet - the MAME system itself is going to be a bit noisy due to the CPU fan, after all.

Personally, I'd like to see flash memory disappear and be replaced by MRAM, but it's unclear if that will ever get to the same density as flash.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Thanks for the 411 on the Solid State Drive situation... ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[it290]

I dunno if it's too expensive.. I mean yeah, if you're planning on putting every single game on there, but I have a MAME box for vertical games and all the decent ones easily fit on an 8GB USB stick along with a Linux install.

[Ed Oscuro]

Good point. All you'd need to do is boot from the USB key. I'm pretty sure MAME doesn't read or write much (if at all) to a physical drive during emulation (except in rare cases like writing NVRAM, reading your system clock for use in a game's settings, etc.).

[cools]

wrd: 2 CF's? How has that been setup - my X40 is nearing 5 year old and will soon be off the asset register at work - I'd love to switch it to solid state

[wrdaniel]

There's an Dual CF Adapter from Addonics

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_ ... 4idecf.asp

which fits into the X40.

Here's a german article about it, but its an x41 which recognizes only one CF card, so its a single adapter.

http://www.think4d.de/nba/nb_ssd.htm

and here's a thread on thinkpads.com about it

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41568

[PC Engine Fan X!]

There's an Dual CF Adapter from Addonics

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_ ... 4idecf.asp

which fits into the X40.

For wrdaniel,

Will the above dual CF adapter work in a regular PC tower setup as well or is it just regulated to PC notebook type of motherboards?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[wrdaniel]

This adapter has a 44 pin connector which is mostly used in notebooks. normal mainboards have 40 pin ide connectors. you can check ebay for them. they are cheaper and you dont have to look for the size, cause in the tower is more room. one thing to look for is DMA capability. there are versions which connect directly to the board or with a cable like normal hdds.

example

for the CF cards there are some reviews in the link/thread on thinkpads.com above. one point - Transcend CF cards are cheap but have horrible data rates, at least for some.

[cools]

Beautiful, thanks Will revisit that towards the end of the year!

[wrdaniel]

especially for the X40 it is a nice solution, as all 1.8" hdds have only 4200rpm. so a good CF card is faster then those drives. Also the power consumption is a bit lower, and the shockresistance is always welcome in a notebook.