Hi all,

in an attempt to beat the 5s boot time, I'm trying to set up a boot from compact flash.

Initial attempts with a compact flash in a pcmcia adaptor have failed, presumably because my bios does not support pcmcia. People with more modern laptops may be more successful.

So I am going to build an IDE - compact flash adaptor and try that. IDE-compact flash adaptors already exist for those who want to purchase them, but the circuit is simple so I'll give it a go myself.

If anyone else wants to try this, be careful of your choice of cards - 3.3v compact flash cards will not work.

Here are some links for those interested.

http://www.howell1964.freeserve.co.uk/parts/cf_pinout.htm

http://www.wau.nl/hemeltje/temporary/personal/miscelaneous/cfadapter.html

If this works I might make a PCB up, if others are interested.

Mike.

pcmcia is quite complicated why not to try USB flash drive?

Because my hardware does not support booting from USB. I've given up on PCMCIA, I am now ooking at building a compact flash to IDE connector. This does not require any software within Menuet. Writting a USB driver within menuet is *very* difficult, whereas building a connector up isnt!

Mike.