Affordable UDMA multi-card reader

[pointertovoid]

Hello everybody!

I've just bought a couple of UDMA multi-card readers, they are both fast and cheap, so I felt other people may be interested.

The Digisol 47200 52in1 takes 52 Flash Cards formats (including the two I need), plugs to USB 2.0, bases on the chip UT335, and is fast: according to http://www.hjreggel.de , only more specialized card readers (offering just CF on FireWire) are significantly faster.

Bought with Paypal at http://www.digisol-online.com/ on Monday evening, received in a neighbour EU country on Friday noon, and they were cheaper than eBay competitors.

I measured the speed with Atto v2.02 available there

http://members.home.nl/rvandesanden/ATTO%20benchmark.html

http://www.hugesystems.com/supportspace/bench32.exe

http://www.pocketpc-blog.de/download/bench32.exe

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/123/A...mark_v2.02.html

because Atto gives measures near 16kB which represent the speed experienced by a user on typical computer files. Neither sustained read speed nor access time, as measured by HdTach or HdTune, come close to this experienced speed; sustained speed is useful for ~1MB pictures only.

The setup is:

- A motherboard fast enough (Pci measured at 124MB/s)

- A D-Link Usb 2.0 card on PCI, with chip Nec

- An Adata CF card, 8GB 266x. It's Slc and Udma5 and fast and has among the shortest reaction times.

So this is the speed of the CF at various IO chunk sizes on:

(Left) a P-Ata adapter directly on the i815ep chipset (a Silicon Image 680 would be marginally better);

(Middle) the Digisol 47200 52in1;

(Right) an old Hama 9in1 reader, without Udma.

----------P-Ata--------47200--------9in1

---------W-----R------W-----R------W-----R

--1kB----2.5---7.7----1.6---2.7----1.0---1.2---MB/s

--4kB----3.4--21------2.9---8.3----1.7---3.3---MB/s

-16kB---25----36-----15----18------6.0---6.3---MB/s

-64kB---36----45-----22----25------7.7---8.1---MB/s

256kB---40----47-----22----25------7.6---8.1---MB/s

I didn't see the 44MB/s said to be achievable with a TI chip at the Usb/Pci card, but these are the best measures I've made up to now. And similar measures on an SD card are quite favourable as well.

Bye!