So I've seen IDE->CompactFlash adapters, allowing me to plug a dinky little CF card in to an IDE bus...
But what I've been thinking is, seeing as I have the guts of a couple of old Linux-able Psion PDAs sitting here, that I should really figure out a way to shoehorn a 20 gig laptop drive in to one and mirror Wikipedia to it.... can you say "Douglas Adams" ?
The Psion has a CF card interface, so my question is: What are my chances of being able to hook an IDE drive up to this? Is it worth probing the port to make sure it's in "16 bit" mode? Is there some way I could tell this? 
Feedback appreciated.
-Michael
CF can emulate IDE as one of its operation modes but the reverse is not true. PDA might not and most definitely does not use ATA mode to access CF contents.
That's interesting... I guess I'll just have to try it and see
Apparently Debian uses a generic IDE driver to access the CF, so this is encouraging.
I might've misunderstood that actually, I think what the page meant was it uses ext2 as a filesystem because the CF is "like an IDE device"
I know of PCMCIA-to-IDE converters, but have never seen a CF-to-IDE converter. If there was one, rest assured that the dongle would probably be enormous and dangerously fragile.
I think that's a cool idea, but my guess is that you're going to have to wait for microdrive capacities to get big enough.
I have the text only wikipedia on my Zaurus.
How much storage do you have? And in what form?
1Gb sd card formatted to ext2 and a 1Gb cf formatted fat.
CF is not "like and IDE device" it IS an IDE device. Well to be more precise, it's an ISA device, just as early IDE was. The old programmed i/o IDE protocol is the only communication supported by the CF cards.
I've given up reading the CF spec, and I'm just building a CF->IDE converter from the schematic provided by Sandisk.
Current minor snag: wire strippers eating 80 conductor IDE ribbon, so I'm going to move on to 40 conductor and be more careful with the soldering.
I guess this pretty much cinches it in my favour:
http://www.command-tab.com/index.php/ipod-super
There are little circuit boards that let you easily plug a CF card into your IDE cable. MonkeyBrains.net has built several systems for use as firewalls, routers, etc.
Here is one of several places to buy the converters:
http://www.mini-box.com/site/index.html
Rudy
I am looking to get some... here are some other URLs.
Cheap:
http://www.pcengines.ch/cflash.htm
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=16#p2602
This place looks like a rip off:
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/289
Here is a pinout URL
http://www.ant-computing.com/v0/v0-flash.html
Also, ebay has some, but lookout for shipping from Hong Hong charges!
I kinda want to take that remark back...you obviously didn't check their product list? because its actually $18 as shown here http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/47_67/products_id/100
no harm done and by the way..I've emailed one particular person there several times in past, its a really nice place -- me yet have to make one order thou heh
Thankyou for this insight.
I was just wondering have you successfully added a HDD drive thru compact flash interface? I am very interested because I wanted to add a Hard drive to a car navigation system which uses compact flash.
I seem to remember once seeing a homebrew adapter that someone made to use two different CF cards in a single CF slot. Am I tripping again, or is that possible?
Yes, it's also for a Psion - hoping for Linux and WiFi, or at least ethernet.
A CF to PCMCIA adapter would be almost as useful. Wasn't there something like that for the iPaq?