On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 01:21:55PM +1100, Rod Whitworth wrote:
quoted text
> On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:51:33 +0100, chefren wrote:
> >On 3/28/08 1:20 AM, Rod Whitworth wrote:
> >
> >> The CF wearout meme needs to die.
> >
> >Specs, it's all about specs, it seems a fact to me that "standard" CF 
> >cards, as used in camera's, often without any technical specification 
> >other than "size", cannot be written as often as ordinary harddisks.
> 
[snip brand examples]

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> I have lost cout of failed HDDs around here and never lost a byte on
> CF. There are nearly as many CFs here as HDDs now and if you have a
> look at new laptops you'll see more and more SSHD and hybrids every
> time a new model comes out.
> 
> Practically speaking if you buy a decent brand of CF or spend the extra
> on an "industrial" model you can expect years of service out of it. I'm
> sure that Bamboo Charlie makes cheapies in CF as well as mobos and
> other junk, don't buy from him....

I have my old IBM ValuePoint 486 that has a bios that really only likes
drives under 512 MB.  It has worked with one 8 GB drive, but not another
seemingly identical WD 8 GB drive, yet alone a new-off-the-shelf 80 GB
PATA drive.  The IBM bios has no adjustability (as does the Award bios),
but instead just displays the size of the hard drive found.  If it
displays a size, it will boot from it, if not, it declares a hardware
error and won't boot from anything.

I wonder if a 512 MB CF card in a PATA-CF adapter would be a solution in
this case.  The box would likely do remote-logging anyway.

Does a CF card in a PATA-CF adapter look just like a HD, bootable and
all, to old BIOS?

Doug.