I just got of the phone with the nice folks at Legacy Fiberoptics. We were discussing an upgrade of a few of our OTDRs. Starting January 2011 they will be offering upgrades for the CMA4000 OTDR which will outfit your OTDR with a removable compact flash.
Here are a few questions and answers concerning the upgrade.
Q1. What is it?
- A. The CMA4000 Compact Flash solution is a replacement for the internal hard drive and floppy drive that originally came with the CMA4000. Traces are stored on a removable compact flash card, rather than the internal hard drive or 1.44MB floppy disks. The compact flash card can then be inserted into the supplied USB reader and plugged into the target PC. This allows for easy transfer to a PC and eliminates the need for 1.44MB floppy disks.
Q2. Why did you do it?
- A. The 1.44MB capacity of the floppy disk makes the transfer of trace data from the CMA4000 to a PC a time consuming process. Other than the serial port (which is equally slow), that was the only way to get a hard drive full of traces off of the CMA4000 – one disk-full at a time. To put this into a little perspective, transferring 144MB of trace data off of a CMA4000 would involve copying data to a floppy disk over 100 times! As it’s a manual process, the time used just for copying data can add up significantly over the course of a year.
Q3. How do you do it?
- A. When the CMA4000 is sent in, we remove both the internal hard drive (if equipped) and floppy drive. The floppy drive bracket becomes home to a 2GB compact flash card and adapter. Instead of ejecting a floppy disk, the operator ejects the compact flash card. The compact flash card can then be inserted into a USB card reader, which can then be connected to the target PC.
Q4. If I choose to purchase this upgrade, what do I get?
- A. Each upgrade comes with the compact flash adapter, 2GB compact flash card, and USB card reader.
Q5. I know there are larger compact flash cards available. Why is the capacity only 2GB?
- A. The CMA4000 software limits the partition size that the CMA4000 can “see.” As a result, we partition and format all cards as 2GB.
Q6. Can I use my own compact flash card?
- A. It is not recommended due to the partition type that the CMA4000 uses.
Legacy Fiberoptics is trusted in calibration, repair and upgrades of the entire line of GN NetTest OTDRs