Change The SMC slot to compact flash

[Spaz O Mataz]

would it be possible to take the smc holder out and put a compact flash slot in it? this would mean that there would be more room. i've looked through the specs and it works at 3.3v aswell. but there might be more alterations to the bios to get it to read the card but it would be worth it. up to 3GB of space to use. everywere i've looked they al say 3.3v or 5v so i recon it would be worth the change. can anyone give there views on this.

here's some info

 

[rcx21000]

CFs are too big unless you take a huge chunk off the back then add an inch mabye. Also you'd have to replace all the chips related to I/O (CF cards are faster than SMC) and the replace all the SDK I/O functions. If someone somehow does that there is the problem that almost 100% percent of the games/emus would be compiled with the original SDK, so they wouldn't work with CF cards.

If someone really wants CF cards, it would prolly be easier to make some CF->SMC adapter with 8MB buffer memory (no one is going to transfer more than 8MB at a time, the RAM couldn't hold it, unless you upgraded the RAM, then you could have 32MB buffer) and it would keep all compatibility. But that still sounds very hard/impossible.

 

[pip]

There are several workable flash adapters already for smc.

 

[GattoVicentino]

"There are several workable flash adapters already for smc. "....

where??

 

[Tobriand]

Perhaps he's referring to the SMC to Compact Flash adapters that are all over the place

Unfoprtunately, there's no Compact Flash to SMC ones that I know of...

 

[rcx21000]

I thought of another way to store some gigs of stuff... Get some kind of card-to-card (or mabye specificly SMC-CF/CF-SMC) copier, then put all your stuff on the CF card. When you want to get something not on the SMC, you delete something from the SMC (remember to copy save files to CF...) and copy something from the CF onto SMC. Problems are that a copier might not exist (but I think it would be 100% possible) and that if you are copying something big it might take awhile...

 

[dad]

what would be simpler is, building a multi SMC slot GP32, or adaptor that does the same. I have seen an XD to SMC adaptor, but it had '128M ONLY' stamped on it, and XD is more expencive than SMC.

 

[empee]

compact flash is kindof IDE drive..
smc slot is nowhere near IDE slot.. so i really doubt that this could be done.

 

[firepika]

if you asked me i think it would be more easyer and less harsh on your outer case to just put support for mmc/sd cards. they hold a max of 512mb now and a few test 1gb cards are floating around on ebay. only real problem with that is getting someone to fix up the bios for it and this would take some time.

 

[Ruune]

Changing the format of the SMC reader is impossible. period. you would have to *replace* the smc controller with a CF or SD controller. It would take a team of EE's to do this... (ie not going to happen...) it would be nice to have extra storage tho

 

[Dozer]

Theres a thing i saw sumwhere, its basically a harddisk that u can shove a smartmedia card in. I duno how u select what to transfer or whatever, i suppose there must b a small screen built in somewhere. But that was portable so maybe you could look into that and just change the stuff on ur smc whenever u want to.