CompactFlash IDE - not recognized

First, please explain what this post is doing in comp.os.linux.embedded

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Lasse Jensen [fafler at g mail dot com]
Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.

You don't think someone in this forum may have the answer or thoughts on a CF/IDE question? This is not XP driven. I know folks out there are doing Linux on CF as well. Maybe they have an answer and maybe it will lead me to doing this in Linux instead.

So, with the first part done, do you have any ideas or answers to share?

The "adapter" is transparent to the IDE hardware, you did have a card in it when you powered the machine ? - the BIOS would need to see the card during POST for it to work, some cards do not support the generic IDE mode required.

Jon

Hi,

Try different cards, as you did. Maybe some will work, some won't. Then, let the BIOS do an auto-probe (if that's possible, i.e. press enter on hard disk data). If that's not possible, leave it on "Auto". Then the BIOS should recognize it. I don't know the specs of your notebook (and I admit, I'm too lazy to search), but a CF-to-IDE interface worked for me on a

486-based notebook as well as on a 486 tower (and on a 286-based laptop, too). So I don't think it's too much trouble there except incompatible settings.

On the other hand, it could be your adaptor (I've got two on ebay, one single- and one double-sided, both worked on my 486-based notebook).

The computers were a Toshiba T4600C, a no-named 486-based computer build from spare parts found in the rubbish and an old Amstrad ALT-286.

Regards, Sebastian

Yes. Is the adapter configured as master or slave? Some old laptops does not look for at a master and expects only a slave drive.

The adapter is a passive piece of hardware, but even so i heard of adapters that just wouldn't boot, so it might be a problem in the hardware design. You might want to try booting the laptop from a Linux floppy (any kind, only limited userspace tools like cat required) with the CF card connected and see if it finds it. Linux doesn't use BIOS data to identify drives.

--
Lasse Jensen [fafler at g mail dot com]
Linux, the choice of a GNU generation.

For one of the adapters, I tried the various ways.. it had a jumper on it that was easy to manipulate. But now that you said that, I did not try changing master/slave with the second adapter... I am not sure how on the second adapter I change master/slave... I'll have to figure that out and give that a shot.

Good idea on the Linux.. I may try this as well.. I have a few different Linux versions here (messed around with my DTivos a couple years back) and there are some Linux digital picture frames out there.

FYI, the said adapters are

and another I purchased from an eBay vendor :

Thanks. I did in fact have the card in. As a "passive' device would I need to worry about the "removable" characteristic of the card. I have seen folks discuss a utility to make the disk "fixed"... do you think that could be it?

Are you running "fdisk" from a hard disk? It's not a good idea to have the CF sharing cable with a hard disk.

You can try booting directly on this:

UPDATE: Got it working. I had to use the SanDisk utility to mark the CF as "fixed." Once I did that the laptop BIOS had no problem seeing the CF via the CF/IDE adapter. I have copied over my 420Mb XP installation and the laptop picture frame works great.