CF as a harddrive - important info

It doesn't fit on your palm but it's still old enough to be called "vintage"? Then it probably belongs in here...
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Kyodai
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Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 7:33 pm

CF as a harddrive - important info

Post by Kyodai »

SkydivinGirl aka Heather has shed some light on the whole CF problem.

So if you ever had any problems booting from a CF you use as a HDD replacement then there might be the problem of "fixed drive vs. removable drive" by many BIOS. I always wondered why my Toshiba Libretto or the IBM PC-110 are so picky about CF, but actually in most of the cases it's some kinda flag that marks them as "removable", preventing many BIOS from booting.

So to make a long story short - there's this tool ATCFWCHG which can change the flag on the CF card.

The command is ATCFWCHG.COM /P /F for a CF on the primary IDE channel.
For secondary IDE channel use ATCFWCHG.COM /S /F instead.

The card needs to be Master on any of these channels for the tool to work.

Also make sure to use "fdisk /MBR" and "sys" on the drive letter to prepare it for being DOS/Windows bootable.


The tool is located here:

http://www.floutsch.com/pub/download/ATCFWCHG.COM



I'll make a local mirror when i got some time.


Edit: Local mirror here:

http://www.tankraider.com/userup/1542356104.zip
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Floopy
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Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:02 pm

Re: CF as a harddrive - important info

Post by Floopy »

Not dead, it's too bad this forum doesn't have a lot more people.

Very nice to know! I use CF cards in many of my machines. They are much cheaper then buying a drive.
Kyodai
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Posts: 232
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 7:33 pm

Re: CF as a harddrive - important info

Post by Kyodai »

Hmmm, maybe one day it will have more people. I lack the time to post 1337 content all the time, but so far we got quite a lot - so google will show it on some ocassions.

Yeah CF as an SSD - pretty cheap, pretty effective. At least for the Toshiba Libretto this is kinda standard. For the IBM PC 110 it's also a no-brainer since it can boot from the CF slot. Some vintage laptops, palmtops and similar devices can be picky - then it's definitely a must to try the trick with writing the flag, helped in some cases.
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