[wellylug] Flash RAM/EPROM disks

[Tony Wills]

Thanks for all the replies suggesting sources, following are a few more 
comments relating to your replies:

At 16:34 10/05/2005, Jethro Carr wrote:
>I think 'flash ram card' is just another name for a compact flash card.

One advert on trademe (#26879407) makes me wonder about the difference 
between "flash cards" and "compact flash cards" :
"Up for auction here is a pair of IDE Solid State Data drives. They take 
flash cards and can be used in place of an IDE hard drive. ...
Size is the same as a floppy disk, can fit in the floppy bay on the case. 
Connector at rear is the same as for any IDE disk, it also has master/slave 
jumper. Compact flash cards can be used in these, with the addition of a 
suitable converter."
--> needs a converter for 'flash cards' as opposed to 'compact flash cards' ??


At 16:34 10/05/2005, Jethro Carr wrote:
>  They usually don't support hotplugging of disks, but this should
>not be a problem for you.

Hot plug isn't required.



At 16:34 10/05/2005, Jethro Carr wrote:
>The IDE adaptors work basicly as a converter: plug in an IDE cable &
>plug in a compact flash card, and the computer sees it as a normal hard
>disk.
At 16:58 10/05/2005, David Antliff wrote:
>The compact flash cards we use have an interface that conforms to some 
>sort of version of the IDE 'standard' so they plug directly into an IDE 
>interface (with the relevant pin adaptor) - so yes I think it's a fairly 
>simple adaptor but I've never opened one up to be sure.
At 16:34 10/05/2005, Pete Black wrote:
>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.
At 16:39 10/05/2005, Peter Jones wrote:
>They are described as using standard 40 or 44 pin IDE connectors, Fully
>compatible with IDE hard disks

Does that mean they pin/socket compatible with laptop drives?  Two reasons 
for this question 1) can I replace drive in laptop 2) Can I use adaptor 
that converts laptop drive to standard 40 pin IDE.??



At 16:34 10/05/2005, Pete Black wrote:
>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

Will probably run the system from ram (ram disk) after loading off the boot 
device, only write back to boot device for saving configuration changes.



At 16:39 10/05/2005, Peter Jones wrote:
>(the price list is a pdf so can't cut'n'paste)

In most recent versions of Adobe's Acrobat reader you can copy text by 
highlighting with "text tool" then using copy.