On 28 Jul 2001, at 14:28, Bob George wrote: >"Day Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Speaking of movind data around, what about smartcards? >> is there a PCMCIA deal for dos and linux? > >Apparently there's some Linux smartcard activity: >http://www.linuxnet.com/info.html > >Do you mean PCMCIA compact flash? There are several that will emulate a >bootable IDE device, and can apparently run any OS that'll fit withing the >capacity of a CF card. Some are about $40 locally. I'm hoping to build a >no-moving-parts firewall someday. > >- Bob Part of the Compact Flash spec includes a section on using a CF device in a "True IDE" mode. The CF device must be configured for this during the power-up cycle, so you can't insert or remove it while you are operating in this mode. I have purchased an adaptor that does this quite nicely. Using an 8MB CF card, and the adaptor, I was able to get my old 386 up and running with DOS 6.22 in about 30 minutes. Most of the time was simply running the DOS 6.22 install program, copying the files from the installation floppies to the CF device. It boots amazingly quickly to a DOS prompt, but it otherwise indistiguishable from an IDE drive. fdisk, format, copy, etc., all work just like you'd expect. CF does have a limited life cycle of # or erases for each sector of the physical media, but I believe this is generally over 10,000, and so should not be a factor, except in the most extreme use. However, it's no more work to pull and replace the CF device than it is a hard drive, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. The company I purchased the adaptor from is PC Engines. A direct link to their WWW site is: http://www.pcengines.com/cflash.htm Cost is $20 + shipping for the adaptor. Compact Flash cards are purchased separately, but are easy to find - even the local K-Mart has them, in the camera department. Hope this helps, Anthony J. Albert ============================================================== Anthony J. Albert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle "Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind." - Charles L. Lucas To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
