Ximimark 2Pcs Compact Flash CF Card to 3.5 Female 40 Pin IDE Hard Drive Bootable Adapter Converter Module

A basic but still pretty cool product, this allows you to replace an IDE hard drive with a Compact Flash (CF) card, which essentially gives you an SSD, but given the speed limitations of IDE. I purchased a pair of these to use in retro computers (16/32 bit systems) to replacing aging IDE hard drives.They work great, they're fast, quiet, and cool running. If you're looking at this product already, you probably already know you want this. But...Before you buy this version, take note, this has a FEMALE connector, which means, you'll be plugging it in to a MALE connector to use it. You'll find male connectors on your motherboards or expansion cards. If you're using this internally on a retro system it might not fit sticking straight out of the male socket like this. You'll probably want to put it on the end of a cable and mount it somewhere else (liker a drive bay) - this is where you'll run in to a problem. An IDE cable has FEMALE connectors on both ends, so you'll plug in to your MALE motherboard socket and then you'll have a female adapter and a female cable that won't connect together. If you intend to mount your IDE to CF adapter away from your motherboard then you'll need the version with the male pinned connector. I use both in different systems.

I've read the bad reviews. I have bought several of these. For $8 - you can't be hurt, out of 10 - one was bad. I used these in older PCs to replace the old mechanical spindle disks. Generally Pentium or newer. I have used them in some older PCs as well, but you generally have to manually figure out the parameters. Whereas in Pentium and newer PCs - the auto-discovery has had no problems seeing them. I use an old copy of EZDrive to duplicate the disks, but other programs work fine as well. And, these work fine with just plain DOS - fdisk, format, etc. Very pleased. And with the removable Compact Flash(CF) card - you can do some neat things.

I have received 3 of these adapters with the 40-pin connectors soldered upside down. I returned the first one and they shipped me 2 more...ALL WRONG. The first one killed the IDE adapter on my computer.Please look at the 2 images I attached. The connector "key" should be on the bottom...NOT on the top.Overall, these IDE-CF card adapters are poorly made with some of the worst soldering I have ever seen.I suppose you could file off the "key" and install upside down to correct for the 40-pin connector being installed wrong.

Put it in a Pentium MMX machine and it worked though It was hard to tell if it was backwards or forwards before powering the computer on

Unit works, BUT LED do not work as they are soldered on backwards!

I used this to successfully replace the hard drive in a BR1600CD recorder with a 128GB microSD card which I installed into a DIGIGEAR SLIM CF ADAPTER (also bought on Amazon).The connector on this device is female, so you will need a male to female IDE cable to connect it to the recorder, and you'll need a power cord that has a floppy drive power connector. I tried another device to do this without success, but this one work. Keep in mind the br1600 will format the SD card into two 80GB partitions, leaving the extra space on the card unused semicolons that's just the design of the BR1600. but this does work for this in case anyone else was wondering about trying it out. I fit the completed assembly into a static bag oh, and just mounted it in the hard drive space.

Works well with my Buddha IDE controller on my Amiga 3000.

Wanted a small (16-20GB) HDD for a Windows 95 machine I've been working on. As it's difficult to find HDDs of that size anymore, I decided going with a CF card and adapter would be a better option.My motherboard (an Atrend ATC-5040) picked up the adapter no problems, and installation was smooth sailing. Haven't done any speed testing with the card or adapter, but I can say that it's faster than a regular HDD, especially one of a more period correct nature.I did have to use an external power connector myself, while some reviews claim the motherboard itself can provide power. It could be that I need to switch it from 5v to 3.3v, but be aware that it may just need power if it isn't working at first.