I can report that I can "see" an 8Gb Seagate ST1.2 Microdrive on the 820 USB, using an SSK multi-card-reader.
This was before installing the Iomega Click driver.
The card reader model number is SSK-ALLIN1-0713.
The first reader that we got died of a bad connection in the short USB cable.
But not before I found that it could read and format Microdrives.
I bought the first SSK reader from eBay, but could find no more on there.
So I searched the web for more of them, and eventually found a couple in Israel.
I see today that there is one available on eBay UK now, from china, with a declared stock of 5.
Aside from it's ability to read, write, and format >4gb Microdrives, it's just a USB card reader.. and in fact it lacks the slot for micro SD cards, which is found in more modern readers.
That limitation is easily overcome with an SD format micro card adapter.
I was lucky enough to find a few of these IBM 4Gb microdrive units complete with CFII adaptors a while back on eBay. Prior to that I thought the term "microdrive" solely referred to the tiny tape drives used on Sinclair Spectrum and QL computers.
These CF microdrives were even more useful at the time since most laptops then came with at least one PCMCIA slot.
The latest one that we have
(HP G72, bought earlier in the year
) didn't even come with PCMCIA's replacement, the Exrepss card slot.
These 4Gb IBM CFII adaptors and microdrives have worked very well with all our Jornada's, and also without in hitch in our
(Cmonexed
) Mobilepro.
It was discovering that half of the onboard the storage was actually an 8Gb microdrive in our our Ameo which first got me looking at them. Most people seemed to come at them from their use in high spec cameras.
The other storage facility provided on the Ameo is one of the now-increasingly rare mini SD card slots.
Our Ameo microdrive gave reliability trouble from the start, which led to us leaving it alone and using a 16Gb micro SD instead.
However I can report that all microdrives we have encountered since have been reliable and useful devices.
Including the ones fitted in other Ameos.
Summary
The IBM Microdrive is a 4GB removable storage solution that has a CompactFlash interface. Ideal for use with a ThinkPad notebook, digital cameras, PDAs and USB compact flash readers. It includes a PC Card Bus adapter that lets you plug the Microdrive into a Type II PCMCIA card slot, which is standard on most currently marketed laptops and ThinkPad systems.
Features
Device Type: Internal Hard Drive
Capacity: 4 GB
Connectivity: Compact Flash
Data Transfer Rate: 5.2 MBps
Spindle Speed: 3,600 RPM
Environment: PC Compatible
Warranty: One
(1
) Year Covers Parts & Labor
The way it was described to me is that the single platter in the microdrive is in fact some kind of glass. It does spin precisely like a conventional hard drive. In fact there is an air hole on the back of each one which warns you not to obstruct it.... presumably if the paltter is spinning so rapdily that damaging air pressure would build up in the casing otherwise.
I also learned that the PCMCIA/microdrive interface is in fact a close relative to the old IDE standard for hard disc drives.
By using one in it's pcmcia adapter on a Jornada therefore you are effectively providing it with a miniature hard drive.
I don't know how the 5.2MBps rate compares with ordinary average CF access times, but I've never been conscious that it was either faster or slower than conventional cards.
On the Jornada 820, copying anything much more than a couple of megabytes appears to slow it down anyway.
There is one caveat to using these drives on Jornadas, and that is to do specifically with increased power drain.
CF cards are almost passive, and although access to them does come with a small power overhead, by comparison if you keep the Microdrive in use then it will drain the battery much faster.
More on microdrives here
Wikipedia
Jornada 820 Diagnostic screen. Like the 72x range, Reset and hit S to enter Dagnostic mode.
QF
