[OB] OB 800 Compact flash as a hard drive

[Reed Turner]

Success - the problem was because of the Sandisk compact flash. Rather than
mess with rejigging the Sandisk internals, I bought a generic (and
inexpensive) noname brand off ebay, did a disk clone from my omnibook disk
to it, plugged it in and away it went, Windows 95 and all. I redid it from
my win98 Omnibook and it ran fine too.

My reason for pursuing this is needing to be able to read and write with
impunity while the computer is shaking and bouncing, attached to a tractor
in the field undergoing vibration testing.

We will see how it works,
Reed


On 7/19/08, ARTHUR DAVIS <art_52 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I found (and downloaded, and a/v scanned with AVG Free) what appears to be
> the CF utility here:
>
> http://www.dynx.net/images/prog/ATCFWCHG.COM
>
> ...haven't tried to use it, so I'm only assuming it's the right one. Let us
> know if you do and it is.
>
> I did come across a few threads that suggested that you'd rather more
> quickly than not "wear out" a CF card if you used it for your XP system disk
> (which threads seemed to imply that you might want to move as much caching
> as you could to an alternate drive, to make your CF system drive last
> longer) ...no idea what "longer" means ...did see something like 1x10^26
> write op's as the EOL point though (which seemed like a lot of zeros to
> math-challenged ol' me).
>
> Regardless: they're so cheap these days, I dinna think 'tis a downside.
> YMMV (but, of course).
>
> -------
> brandon
>
> **EOL = end of life
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:49:19 -0600
> From: Reed Turner
> Subject: OB 800 Compact flash as a hard drive
>
> I know more about this now - it turns out to be somewhat dependent on the
> compact flash you are using. Im my case it is a sandisk and the error comes
> because the bios sees it as removeable. Sandisk used to offer a utility,
> ATCFWCHG.com, that would reset the bits in the flashcard identifier to make
> it appear as a fixed disk and then it would be recognized. Unfortunately
> they no longer offer it and I haven't been able to find it on the web
> either. Some card brands do not have this issue - others do, and there is no
> guide I can find - it is apparently a trial and error.
>
> Reed
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ron Beckley
>
> I currently have a 800CT with 4G flashcard on IDE to CF Adapter that is
> working. I have Win98 and DSL working with two 2 G partitions. It has been
> a
> while since I made the setup but I think I made a Ghost image of a working
> Win98 drive and restored it to the CF card. Don't recall using ATAInit. I
> probably used an adapter to connect the CF to my desktop or used an OB
> floppy to start up the OB with CD support.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Reed Turner
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:04 AM
> > Subject: Re: [OB] OB 800 Compact flash as a hard drive
> >
> > Hi:
> > Just wondering if you ever got this to work. We would be interested in
> > doing something similar with a 2 gb flash card and ide to CF adapter on
> > our 8000ct's. Currently, when installed, if you F2 into the bios, it
> > shows a hard drive of the correct size but when you let it attempt to
> > boot, the startup progresses through the two " Configuring [Bridge
> > Controller]" messages, then restarts and shows three lines
> >
> > 166 Mhz Pentium CPU
> > External Cache: 512K enabled
> > Invalid or damaged Bootable partition
> >
> > and stops. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
> > Reed
>
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