On Wed, Nov 04, 1998 at 10:07:53AM +0200, Jukka Marin wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 04, 1998 at 08:58:39AM +0100, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
> > > Some time ago there was discussion about using Compact FLASH solid state
> 
> > No, I've not been able to make mine work.  I managed to fix the freezing
> > by handling errors in the PCMCIA code instead of just ignoring them.
> > But I couldn't get the cards to work, even after increasing some timeouts
> > as was suggested to me.
> 
> Hmm, odd.  I have used CF cards in my custom hardware design and they work
> just fine (and the software driver was quite trivial).  The only problem
> I had with the SanDisk CF cards was that the card enable signal (/CE1 in
> my case) must not fall before /RD and /WR are valid.  In my design, this
> wasn't the case and I had to add a few logic gates in the /CE1 signal
> path to delay it a few nanoseconds.
> 
> I can use these CF cards under win95 with an ISA / PCMCIA adapter card
> without problems, so I think the timing requirement isn't too weird.  I
> haven't tried this adapter with NetBSD because this machine has a small
> disk with no room for NetBSD..
> 
> What did the cards do after you fixed the PCMCIA code error handling?

Everyone here knows that there are two distinctly different ways to use
"ATA Flash" cards, right?  This includes CompactFlash and the other miniature
cards that need an adapter jig to fit in the PCMCIA form-factor socket.

If you try to talk to them as a PCMCIA device, they act like an IDE
*controller*.

If you use a different cable/adapter you can talk to them as an IDE *disk*.
Some laptops may support both methods; I've never actually put one of these
cards in a laptop to check...

I have a desktop machine here using an Adtron (note, one "d"!) SDDA ATA-card
caddy which plugs into the machine's primary IDE controller.  I boot and run
with no trouble so far.  Adtron make a number of more sophisticated caddies
which actually have an FPGA on them that makes linear-flash and static ROM
cards look like IDE disks, but for ATA flash cards that already know how to
act like disks, you don't need that.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
	"And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"