Expansys have got the Intel X18-M 80GB in 1.8" form at £149.99

http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=174734&partner=uknews

They list the 2.5" drive at £474.99

Isn't that 1.8" price a bit low ?

It's probably one of those new Intel Postville SSD's. Those are cheaper because they use smaller chips. (which are faster as well! )

Down to £130 tomorrow (for the day).

The HD just died in my MkII. I'm a bit confused about a replacement with regards to SSD. This sale is tempting (even for a filthy American...that's a joke, son).

I would need a SATA-to-IDE adapter, correct?

Like this:

http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html

I'm trying to do my homework so that I don't have to, um, do my homework, um, again...

-sTv

edit 09/11/09 11AM: Changed the link to the correct 44-pin adapter.

Yep. That should work. I don't know that anyone has actually tried it yet, though. Probably the biggest concern is whether there's enough space inside the empeg case to handle even that small adapter.

If that is a problem, and you can live with only 1 drive, drill new holes in the mounting plate and mount the drive turned 90 degrees ccw. Refold the cable as needed.

You may want to locate the new holes, after figuring out how to refold the cable.

Bueno idea. I've seen the pix and that shouldn't be too difficult. One drive is all I've ever needed anyway.

Sucks not having the Empeg in the car...

Funny, how long it has taken for this technology to work its way up to production-based cars. Most of my friends have newer cars that still show track number and time...that's so "VCR"...

In fact, my closest friend's wife still uses a VCR...

-sTv

Hey, my wife still uses a VCR. Of course, that's because we see no need to re-purchase her video collection on DVD.

After a week of trying, I have failed to get my Empeg MkII, a 64Gb Kingston SSDNow! drive and SATA - IDE adapter to play nice.

I can get the drive built, flash the developer player upgrade, and even start transferring music.

However, the transfer rarely lasts more than a few minutes. The transfer will die, errors get thrown (something about irq, or something about no space left on device, or heck I can't remember now...).

All of this was done to replace what I thought was a dead 100Gb IDE drive.

Miraculously, that drive lives still. I got so frustrated with the above process that I reinstalled the "dead" drive...which came back to life as if nothing was wrong.

Jeepers, I'd still rilly like to use the SSD!

If the old drive works, then the Empeg and its cable should be good.

I haven't tested the SATA - IDE adapter in any other computer, so that is my next task. In the meantime, any thoughts?

-Thanks!!

-sTv

How much diagnostic work did you do in order to determine that the disk drive really was the culprit in the first place?

As opposed, to, say, a loose solder joint on the IDE header, which would tend to manifest itself as things like intermittent IRQ errors, regardless of the type of storage media...

We'll need to see some accurate detailed observations before we can begin to help here.

-ml

This is total anecdotal information, but I heard somewhere that either some of the SATA SSDs or PATA/SATA adapters didn't work well in PIO mode. I'd look into it.

Good question. The SSD is now in an ASUS Pundit P1-AH2 running MythTV beautifully. I also ran that drive with Ubuntu 9.04, Knoppix 5.something and Mandriva 2009.1. I'm pretty sure the drive is OK.

The fact that the old drive works in the Empeg makes me think there's something not "right" about the SATA SSD to SATA - IDE adapter to Empeg chain. But then again, could be barking up the wrong tree(s).

I'll take some time this weekend to troubleshoot the adapter.

The SSD hardware available now have no cache (at least they didn't until OCZ released some drives that have, like, 64k or something within the last few months...).

That shouldn't have a negative impact on how the Empeg does its magic, correct?

It IS nice to have the Empeg back in the car again. Yay!

-sTv

It might be that you have a bad connection when the cable is in a certain position.


Only old SSDs have no cache in them. Nearly all SSDs made in the last year have some quantity of cache that is >= 16MB.

I meant the IDE connector on the Empeg, a relatively common source of trouble. But yeah, the adapter is suspect as well.