[wellylug] Flash RAM/EPROM disks

[Pete Black]

CF cards basically implement the IDE interface already, and adapters to 
use a CF card as a hard drive are cheap and available from retailers 
e.g. dick smith:

http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/428038820889009c273fc0a87f9906e8/Product/View/XH4137

CF cards themselves are also pretty cheap and can be found on trademe 
etc. for fairly low prices.

Be aware, however, that flash devices arent particularly suited to use 
as a hard-drive in a 'normal usage profile' setting - that is, they have 
a limited lifespan, and filesystems such as ext3 tend to cause the cards 
to 'wear out' quicker because they repeatedly write data (e.g. journal) 
to the same area of the disk, using up precious 'write cycle' lifespan. 
filesystems such as VFAT are actually better suited to use on CF cards, 
and Linux should support booting and running from VFAT no problem.

However, if you set things up well, you can pretty much avoid using the 
CF card as a 'hard drive', only writing to it when configuration data 
changes, and using network shares etc. to handle user data, in which 
case its unlikely to be a real issue for you.

Hope that helps

-Pete





>
> In order to use some old computers as dedicated boxes running embedded 
> linux code, I want to replace some boot devices (floppies or IDE HDDs) 
> with solid state disks (Cost is a significant consideration and USB is 
> not an available option).
>
> For some things I only need 1.5MB of storage so was thinking of 
> building an eeprom floppy drive replacement/emulator device.
> Anyone seen a circuit for one of these (there are a few notes on the 
> web suggesting there was a Steve Carcia Circuit Cellar project years 
> ago).
>
> For larger systems some sort of flash ram card (32MB?) would seem to 
> suit.  I see there are 'flash ram cards' and 'compact flash ram 
> cards'), does anyone know whether either of these have the same 
> connectors as laptop HDD drives? (pictures of adaptors to plug them 
> into IDE appear to have no active components but just small to large 
> plugs - can anyone confirm?).
>
> Anyone got a cheap source of such devices?
>
> Tony.
>
>