Tools of the trade – Compactflash card reader
I’ve probably mentioned before that I like the compactflash format for “digital media”. My camera uses Compactflash, so does the nexia audio player I use and the old used pda I’ve got, uses compactflash, so…. I have a variety of cards around, I’ve got an 8MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 512MB and 1024MB card around somewhere. With all those cards and just three devices…. well, when I started thinking “usb memory stick” to replace floppy discs to move files from one machine to another… I thought, why should I pay for something with the memory built in… so, I found something that did well….
I basically found a “CF Card Reader” that’s the size of one of the little USB memory stick (thumb) drives. It essentially has a slot in the side and your compactflash card plugs in there directly. To me, what’s really nice is that if I need more memory for it, I can just scrounge up one of my larger capacity compacflash cards (or buy another) and have the option of using it for something else later on. (As opposed to have no other real options but using the memory as a usb key…)
The reader I got was $10 at mydigitaldiscount.com
It comes with a usb extension cable for those awful to reach USB ports. It’s USB 2.0 based and handles compactflash type I/II and microdrives. It works without a hitch under linux and Windows XP. It should work well with Mac OSX (haven’t tested there). Windows 2000 I imagine would work well, but earlier Windows would likely need the driver cd. For me a small $10 adapter for my existing compactflash cards seemed to make a lot of sense.
Anyway this little reader is “Made in China” and the only real identification on it (other than “CF Card Reader USB 2.0”, is a model number (?) HY-01001 and what may be a serial number ( T53005 )