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Boot from PCMCIA-CF card with no floppy?
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Subject Author Date
Boot from PCMCIA-CF card with no floppy? andrew0812 05-18-2006
Posted by andrew0812 on May 18, 2006, 12:05 pm
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 I am planning on converting an old laptop into a digital picture frame
like many are doing today. I would like to make this all solid state,
no spinning media. I know that I should be able to boot from a CF card
using a CF-IDE converter board, but is it possible to boot PCMCIA-CF
with no floppy drive? This is an old 600 Mhz Dell laptop. I don't
even know if it can boot USB.

I am doubting that it is possible without an IDE boot loader, but I
just wanted to throw the question out there. I guess if it will boot
USB, I could use a bootloader on a USB device to boot the PCMCIA card,
but at that point, might as well just stick the whole system on the
USB. It will have USB 1.0, which will be too slow at boot, so CF-IDE
is probably my best bet, right?

Andrew


Posted by William P.N. Smith on May 18, 2006, 2:22 pm
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 andrew0812@gmail.com wrote:
>I am planning on converting an old laptop into a digital picture frame
>like many are doing today. I would like to make this all solid state,
>no spinning media. I know that I should be able to boot from a CF card
>using a CF-IDE converter board, but is it possible to boot PCMCIA-CF
>with no floppy drive?

Sure, it'll work, just replace the hard drive with a PCMCIA card
adapter and go at it. Note, however, that Windows will not run (long)
on this setup, as it constantly writes stuff, and CF has a limited
number of write cycles...

What does the floppy drive have to do with anything?

Posted by andrew0812 on May 18, 2006, 4:24 pm
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I'll be using linux with no swap.

I was under the impression that to get something to boot from the
PCMCIA slots, you had to chain it with a bootloader. All the info I
have seen talks of boot floppies and such, to either boot PCMCIA
microdrives, or PCMCIA CD-ROMs.

Have you done this before? To be clear, I am talking of using a PCMCIA
to CF adapter, not an IDE to CF adapter.

Andrew


Posted by William P.N. Smith on May 18, 2006, 6:48 pm
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andrew0812@gmail.com wrote:
>To be clear, I am talking of using a PCMCIA
>to CF adapter, not an IDE to CF adapter.

Oops, I missed that detail. Nope, the only thing I can think of (I'm
assuming the machine can't boot from USB) is an IDE->CF adapter.

PCMCIA drivers can get really ugly, and there are several different
incompatable chipsets. None of the recent boot disks I've seen can
talk to them, and I don't think I've _ever_ seen a laptop with a "boot
from PCMCIA" option.

IDE->CF adapters are cheap, what's wrong with that solution?

Posted by GlowingBlueMist on May 18, 2006, 7:35 pm
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William P.N. Smith wrote:
> andrew0812@gmail.com wrote:
>> To be clear, I am talking of using a PCMCIA
>> to CF adapter, not an IDE to CF adapter.
>
> Oops, I missed that detail. Nope, the only thing I can think of (I'm
> assuming the machine can't boot from USB) is an IDE->CF adapter.
>
> PCMCIA drivers can get really ugly, and there are several different
> incompatable chipsets. None of the recent boot disks I've seen can
> talk to them, and I don't think I've _ever_ seen a laptop with a "boot
> from PCMCIA" option.
>
> IDE->CF adapters are cheap, what's wrong with that solution?

You might want to visit the following links and see if they answer your
questions.

(Research into Booting a Linux System with an IDE - Compact Flash Adapter)
http://kerneltrap.org/node/4898
(Booting Linux from Compact Flash)
http://silent.gumph.org/content/4/1/011-linux-on-cf.html
(Linux-2200)
http://linux-2200.berlios.de/



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