[Sderby] Compact Flash Disks

[David Bottrill]

Here goes.

On Fri, 2002-10-18 at 20:23, Tony Martin wrote:
> Thanks for that info
> 
> I'm wondering 2 things.
> 
> 1. What about a basic O/S on one?
Yuo should be able to get a minimum os in 300MB

> 2a What are the maximum times the flashes can be re-written? How sson would
> that be reached with Smooth chattering away
The number or erase cycles is in the millions so it shouln't be to bad

> 2b (8) Are there RAM card equivalents
There have been in the past but these seem to have been superseeded by
Compact Flash as the technology has improved

> 2c  Can you set them to be read only and then have a RAM drive for storage
> (perhaps with networked storage?) It should make it very protectable. You
> have a little switch on the front of you machine to allow or stop updating
> of the flash.
No, but you could boot from the disk, setup a RAM disk then mount the CF
disk read only.

> 2d Anyway of bringing down the power consumption. I don't think the HDD uses
> that much power especially in low power mode.
I've just picked up a 4.3GB quantum drive and that quotes 5V at 860mA
and 12V at 750mA that's a total of 13.3W, I've also got a 6.4GB laptop
drive this takes 5V at 500ma i.e. 2.5W this is still far more than a CF
card.

> 2e What about using an old portable?
I used to use a P75 laptop as a DCHP and WEB server on my network. I
think that was running SuSE 7.0 at the time. I also did manage to get
SmoothWall running on a laptop once, but it was a drag as Smoothwall 0.9
did not support PCMCIA cards, not sure about the new version, I may look
into this as I have a spare laptop.

> 2f Any other thoughts?
> 2g Better stop now as am running out of letters!
> 

David Bottrill