Embroidery Machines & Compact Flash (CF) card stuff 2004

Here are the piece parts.

The CF card. CF stands for Compact Flash. It used to be the standard card for use in digital cameras. (but not any longer) CF cards are becoming more difficult to find, so if you have a geeky friend, they may have some tossed in a desk drawer someplace. Trust me, they don't need them any longer. Ask if you can have them. :-)

The Reader/Writer. They come in all different sizes and shapes. Some are multi-slot, i.e. they will accept cards of different sizes (SD, mini SD, others that I don't know the names of). I'm only concerned with the CF card. My Reader/Writer (that I show here) has just ONE slot; it will ONLY accept a CF card.

The Adapter. The "adapter" is a sleeve-type piece of metal that has holes on the non-slot side. It effectively sizes-up the CF card so the CF card can fit in the slot of the 300e. Why Janome didn't make the slot the size of the CF card originally is a big mystery.

On one end of the adapter are a bunch of holes. (The other end is a slot for the CF card).

On one end of the CF card also has holes .. in the same configuration as the holes of the adapter (or conversely, the adapter has holes in the same configuration as the CF card). (The other end of the CF card has no holes.)

This is the way my Reader-Writer connects to my computer via the USB port.

My computer happens to have a USB port in front, as well as in the back. Both ports are exactly the same.

I could have used either one, but it was more convenient for me to use the front one.

The CF card slides into the Reader-Writer, hole end first. This allows the computer to recognize the CF card exactly as though it were an external hard drive.

Geeky digression: this is because the hole configuration is exactly the same as the hole configuration on the ribbon cable that connects any hard drive to the computer.

The CF card slides into the adapater, hole end first. The holes in the CF card face the same direction as the holes in the adapter.

Insert the adapter (with the CF card in it) into the slot of the 300e, hole end first. The 300e will now recognize the CF card.

The CF cards used for the Janome embroidery machines are EXACTLY like those used for digital cameras and laptops. They can be used interchangeably. However, the embroidery machines format the cards for their own use. I like to put a label on my CF card that I use with my embroidery machine so that I don't mix the different CF cards up.

I have all my embroidery designs on my computer. I have a directory/folder just for embroidery designs with sub-folders for different categories that make sense to me. (I'm still figuring out how I want to remember what designs go where).

When I want to use a design on the 300e, I put the CF card in the Reader-Writer (hole end first), do a drag-n-drop with Windows Explorer (NOT the browser, Internet Explorer!!) into the appropriate embroider folder in the CF card. For the 300e, that is the EMB5 folder. I don't know what the folder names are for the other Janome machines.

I only copy over the designs I'm going to use. I have discovered that the 300e (possibly even the other Janome machines) take a LONG time to recognize the CF card if there are a lot of designs on the CF card.

Remove the CF card from the Reader-Writer and put it into the adapter, hole end first. Put the adapter into the slot in the embroidery machine, hole end first. When you tap the card icon on the screen, the embroidery machine will go thru it's own gyrations and eventually recognize the CF card and display all the designs on it.