I had attempted an install of 8.1 after formatting the card as you would any other Mac HD. Maybe there's a problem with where it writes the driver on a newly formatted card? Perhaps I have to run DIsk Doctor and Speed Disk on it right after the install?
I may pull out the 5300cs tonight or tomorrow and try some more debugging. If I find out anything interesting, I'll post.
Regards,
Bob Eye
Answering my own post ...
I pulled out the 5300cs last night and tried to boot with the CF card in. Bus Error. <sigh>
I couldn't get the card out except to paper clip it out. I went ahead and booted the PB normally, then inserted the card. It was read just fine.
Next, I opened Drive Setup (version 1.7.3, under MacOS 8.1) and checked the CF card. It said there was a problem with the driver and the driver could not be upated but the disk could be formatted. Hmmm ... Now we're getting somewhere ...
I went ahead and (re-)formatted the CF card as a HFS Mac disk, one partition. I then rebooted the PB withe CF card installed and ... NO BUS ERROR! WOOHOO!
Next, I did a drag-and-drop transfer of the major system elements, selected the CF as the boot disk and rebooted .. and ... the PB booted from the CF card!
For those of you who like numbers (in min:sec):
Time to boot, 775 MB HD: 1:28 Time to boot, 775 MB HD Extensions Disabled: 0:58 Time to boot, 128 MB CF: 1:25 Time to boot, 128 MB CF Extensions Disabled: 0:56
(Number of extensions roughly the same. Boot time measured from screen light up to complete desktop. YMMV.)
So boot time with the CF card is comparable to booting with the HD. Newer higher RPM drives (> 2 GB) will no doubt beat the CF card.
There is only one issue I could find in all this .. I changed the CF card's icon from it's default icon to a custom one (Star Trek TOS shuttlecraft, if you must know :-) ). It could be, I guess, that this somehow caused the CF card disk driver to become corrupted. (?) So it's the plain generic CF card icon for me from now on. Hopefully the more routine operations with the card won't corrupt the driver.
Anyway, my PB 5300cs now seems to be bootable from a CF card! Now to get a larger card than the 128 MB I have - it barley holds the stripped System Folder with no apps. I guess I misjudged the size I would need. Oh, well, the 128 MB CF can go into the camera ... perhaps I'll get a microdrive ... yeah, that's it ...
Hope this helps someone else.
Regards,
Bob Eye Dallas, TX
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