My Compact Flash CF8 Microbee

[ChickenMan]

I ask such questions as when i finally get back to my Bee, i want CF to work reliably and expect your reply to be of help.

Thanks. Not sure if I'm going to be to helpful as I really cant answer your A), B) etc questions, I'll leave that to Greybeard.

I found generating the cfboot_0_59_cf8_128k_1p_CHS_490_4_32.hdd-76-4-32 (for example) selecting the matching BIOS rom and most importantly the actual CF card itself all can effect the read/write performance. I found the Sandisk 32MB CF that have CHS of 490/4/32 to work without issues on all my CF Mbee's that I had.

I dont have that 'bee in the top pic any more, I started with just the simple and cheap IDE to CF cards and a few wires actually worked better for me. But I dont have those units either anymore.  I use a Suzy CF 0.4 version that has been upgraded to 0.5 and I can now use those cheap no-name CF cards from China as in this pic.  Only issue I found is if I use ubee512 to write files to the CF card image then that image would not boot in the Mbee when written to a CF card. So all files were transferred via a Gotek (or external 3.5" floppy drive) plugged into the Mbee without any issues.

   

Also, when generation the cfboot image that it also creates the 3 main Mbee floppy bootable images, I found ONLY the SS80 image to actually work.  You can boot it if you hold down the F key when you turn the Mbee on.