Wondering if anyone hit this problem... am currently shopping for a CF card to IDE adapter. Cheapest ones are these, photo below.
I searched on Ebay and sorted by cheapest " PRICE + SHIPPING "
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=cf+ide+40pin&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&LH_PrefLoc=2&_sop=15&rt=nc&_pgn=1The first three sellers in the list, charge only 1 USD for shipping from china direct. So I go to buy that, then once in the cart, go figure the 1 USD shipping magically turned into THREE bucks !!!
![WTF? :wtf:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wtf2.gif)
Tried all 3 sellers, same result for all of them.
Has anyone experienced that before ? Anything one can do to rectify the situation... like, is it the seller screwing things up, or Ebay themselves ? Any luck getting that problem sorted so you can get the advertised shipping ?
I sure will be more careful from now on !
![ThumbsDown :--](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_thumbsdown.gif)
So I kept going in the list of results, and when I got to that seller that charges 2 USD for shipping....
https://www.ebay.com/itm/112934293618?hash=item1a4b689072...in the cart I ACTUALLY got charged 2 bucks, not 3 or 5 or god knows what.
So in the end the advertised shipping is twice that of the others... but will actually end up being cheaper in practice, weird... so I think I will order that one.
I can't figure out why they put a freaking FEMALE IDE connector when the thing is supposed to replace a hard drive that obviously has a MALE connector
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/facepalm.gif)
They thought one would plug them straight to the motherboard or what ?!
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif)
They also have a FLOPPY power connector, again how many old 3.5" IDE hard drives have a floppy power connector ? Not the one I saw I the past 30 years at least.
I understand that a floopy connector is enough to power this adpater, but it's an ADAPTER... it's supposed to make it easy for your to ADAPT to the old hard drive you are replacing, no ?
![ThumbsDown :--](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_thumbsdown.gif)
So it's supposed to sport the same connectors...
So now I probably do not have a spare floppy power connector on this machine, so will need to bodge something, more work and ugliness. Have a few old salvaged PC pwoer supplies so I can pinch an FDD connector from those, but then how do I plug it to the old female power connector in the machine ? Would need a male power connector... for that I would need to destroy some old peripheral, not sure I have that. So would need to cut the old HDD connector and solder the FDD one instead. How "cool"....
Yes, I bet there are adapters for sale somewhere... more money and yet more weeks to wait for it to arrive.... am on a budget so will make it work with what I have here, or nothing.
As for the female 40 pin IDE connector, that's easier to fix with some male to male 0.1" strips... should do it I guess. I have some here so no worries.
So that's a lot of hacking and messing around to get this thing to work when it should have come with the proper connectors to begin with !
![Blah :blah:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/blah.gif)
But.... only 4 bucks shipped, so I guess you get what you pay for....
Still, can't wait to receive it and start playing with it....
I saw another adapter that you can mount on an expansion slot bracket, which looks pretty neat. Have plenty of empty slots so that could do it.
Would make for a neater install, the adapter would not be flapping in the breeze inside the computer, and the drive would also be accessible from the outside of the case which is practical.
Also, it has the proper MALE IDE connector this time. However it still has the floppy power connector, which is the main problem.to me, so that would still need to be sorted.
Price is same as the crappier one above,... SHIPPED that is. Unit itself is twice the price, but shipping is free (ACTUALLY free, I checked in the cart).
So really I would go for that one, but the problem is..... regardless of vendor, the shipping delays are intolerable. The crappy one is 2 to 3 weeks, I can about live with that, but the better one is... septembre to octobre... basically by the time you receive it you already forgot you had ordered it in the first place !
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
So... think I will gor the crappy one, just so I can get in a reasonable time frame and get this GPIB project moving along.
![](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ECIAAOSwrY9az6s4/s-l1600.jpg)