4gig CF microdrive for $199 US!!

[stampsm]

19.99 wow i am going to have to look into getting one of these

[grey_moon]

200 pounds for a mp3 player and 4 gig microdrive, sounds tempting, but I dont need a mp3 player since i got my z and 4 gig is peanuts when it comes to mass storage...  what i want is a wifi hdd

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/36534.html

[arniel]

200 pounds for a mp3 player and 4 gig microdrive, sounds tempting, but I dont need a mp3 player since i got my z and 4 gig is peanuts when it comes to mass storage...  what i want is a wifi hdd
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/36534.html

Now that DOES look good!  Could leave the drive in rucksack and just use Z with WiFi card...
Presumably, with an ad-hoc network, anyone within range could share the files.  Should give the RIAA a heart attack :-)
I received the EZ-GIG PCMCIA -] IDE adapter today,the good news is that it should be easy to splice 5v power into the IDE output to feed a HD.  Just have to hope that the adapter itself can run with 3.3v.

[freizugheit]

I have successfully removed the 4GB Microdrive from MuVo MP3/4GB player.

I followed the instructions as listed at http://www.studio2f.com/misc/2004/03/22hit...nomad_muvo2.php to open the internal of MuVo MP3/4GB player.

The instructions were too briefed.  Here are points to note during the removal:

- Remove the battery cover first before removing the four screws.
- Having removed the screws, you can remove the battery compartment easily.
- Next, flip the PCB slowly to access to the next layer of the internal where you can see a shielded plate covering the 4GB Microdrive.
- You need to remove  three additonal screws, two black ones and one silver (micro-sized) at the edges of this shielded plate.
- The plate cannot be fully removed, slightly level off the plate so that you can pull out the Microdrive.  It was a Hitachi (Made in Thailand) 4GB MicroDrive with the white label (OEM).

After the removal, I formatted the drive using Sandisk Image 6 in 1 reader on Win XP using FAT32 format.

When the formatted Microdrive was inserted in my SL-5600 with Sharp original ROM 1.32 Version, it was immediatelly recognised as 3,991,924 KB CF drive on the Zaurus desktop.

Voila!!!

[coder101]

This is great news!
I saw a MuVo today for $450 AUD while a 4Gb microdrive would set me back $800 AUD.
Has anybody tried the 1.5Gb model?

[coder101]

Ok, I parted with the $450 AUD and got the MuVo.  I have taken the microdrive out and put it in my C860. It didn\'t like it. Lock up. Had to pull the battery out to power off.  Struggled to pull the microdrive out. Formatted it in card reader connected to a Win2K PC as FAT32. Took quite a while.  Put it back in the Zaurus and turned it on. Card looked like it was mounted but probably not. Ran the normal terminal program and keyboard wouldn\'t work. Handwriting recognision worked though and a dmesg | more showed lots of error (forgot what now).  Tried to select eject for the card, but my Zaurus seemed to freeze. Gave it a few minutes and decided that it had crashed hard.  Had to pull the battery out again. After a few more crashes, I finallly got a working system. I copied a 10Meg MP3 from my SD card to the microdrive and it looked like it copied ok. I played the MP3 from the microdrive and it played ok. So it works. It doesn\'t like to be ejected though. A few crashes and battery in-outs. Also you need to put some sticky tape on the top and bottom  so you have something to hold onto when you want to pull the drive out.
Ok, a test. When my machine is stable with a 128M CF card, eject, pull out the card. Put in the microdrive and the icon appears. But it is not mounted. dmesg reports lots of read_intr errors (error=0x10 status=0x59). So I manually mount.
mount -t vfat /dev/hda /mnt/cf
And it mounts ok. The 10M MP3 is still there
let it rest a few minutes.  Manual
umount  /mnt/cf
works. Earlier I tried the icon and crash,battery cycle again
Now, pulling the microdrive out then causes the keyboard to stop working again. Handwriting works though. Won\'t suspend, hard crash again.
BTW the MuVo didn\'t like my Amicroe 256M CF, but did like my 256M Lexar CF.

[ashikase]

I have a 4GB drive from a Muvo2, and it works fine with my C760.  No problems so far.

I do seem to recall a bit of strangeness when I first tried to format it, though.  If I remember correctly, the drive showed up (in Linux) as having 4 partitions.  I deleted all 4 partitions, created 1 new FAT32 partition, formatted it, and it worked fine.

- ashikase

[yodabob]

ashikase, Could you please post some instructions on how to do this ?  I think I may be having the same problem with this drive for my 860.  CF icon shows up, but can\'t browse through the file manager to any files.  I\'ve formatted in XP as FAT32 and it formats fine, works fine in my other devices, but doesn\'t work properly on the C860.  Your experience would be really valuable to the group (at least to me !)   Thanks !