Very nice!

But does it support DOS, or does it need a windows driver?

With modern PCs, I found that most people don't use the IDE controller anymore. So that controller is perfect for hosting CF cards.

I used that to boot from a CF card into DOS 6.22 on a Phenom II machine. It worked just like on the 486...

The BIOS chip on the card would indicate that it's bootable, and therefore shouldn't need any specific driver.

Not so vintage... pre-486 computers have not PCI slots; 486 boards with PCI slots are scarce, too.

I think it would be more useful if was an ISA card. Also, CF cards are dissapearing from the market, so a SD card would be a better option.

How about using one of those?

Also, I wonder if there are SCSI to flash card adapters...

CF cards are becoming less popular, but they are still being produced, and they still have pretty wide availability, so I'd consider 'em to still be the best low-cost flash option. SD cards have some significant disadvantages as boot devices... they're typically much slower than CF cards, and because they're not natively ATA compatible, there's an active conversion involved... which means that the adapters are more expensive and the quality of the adapter is much more critical... the cheap Chinese ones tend to be rather flaky.

I've never seen any direct SCSI->flash converters, but there are a few different SCSI->IDE converters available, and you should be able to hook a IDE->CF or IDE->SD converter to one of those. Those SCSI adapters aren't cheap, though, so they're probably not really worthwhile in most cases.

Do you think one of these would work?

http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Fi-Compact-Adapter- … l/dp/B001JT708G

Adapts SD cards to fit the CF slots of SLR cameras kind of like the adapters for fitting micro SD cards to full size SD slots.

High-end digital cameras still use CF cards because they are faster than SD cards, so CF will be around for a while, but perhaps not in your local JB Hi-Fi/Walmart/etc.

I recently picked up a Canon 60D for work. First of this line with SD instead of CF unfortunately.

Zup wrote:

Not so vintage... pre-486 computers have not PCI slots; 486 boards with PCI slots are scarce, too. […]
Show full quote

Not so vintage... pre-486 computers have not PCI slots; 486 boards with PCI slots are scarce, too.

I think it would be more useful if was an ISA card. Also, CF cards are dissapearing from the market, so a SD card would be a better option.

How about using one of those?

Also, I wonder if there are SCSI to flash card adapters...

I have one of those IDE-SD. Nice for DOS and W98. Slow as hell in XP...

swaaye wrote:

I recently picked up a Canon 60D for work. First of this line with SD instead of CF unfortunately.

Pretty sure 1D4, 1Ds3 and 5D2 still use CF though?

Must admit I haven't been keeping up with memory cards, maybe SD (or the newer X D standard) has caught up?

Yup Canon is still using CF in their top models.

Apparently SD cards are getting faster and higher capacity, and their form factor must be appealing I guess. The only thing I dislike about CF is how occasionally I have to fix a bent pin in the readers.

I use this flash drive with a DOS setup, I don't know about the speed compared to Compact flash. It is sufficient anyways. I t comes with a molex power connector, it says it can run without the connector when there is 5V on a certain IDE pin.

I like Zups suggestion too, as one can quickly take out the SD card and put it in another 'modern' computer.

swaaye wrote:

The only thing I dislike about CF is how occasionally I have to fix a bent pin in the readers.

I've noticed that. Also, CF seems to occasionally suffer from "random" BSOD access problems.

Wouldn't a 8GB or larger SSD Sata drive be better than these? I see a 8GB on newegg for 39.99, I already have a couple Sata 150 PCI cards. I was thinking of this route for my Windows 98SE rig.

I run 2x 64Gig SSD's in raid 0 in my main rig and windows 7. I love it.

That's a good point. For any version of Windows a SDD makes a lot of sense. Still, 40 bucks is quite a bit of money, but this will definitely change over time.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

That's a good point. For any version of Windows a SDD makes a lot of sense. Still, 40 bucks is quite a bit of money, but this will definitely change over time.

Well, the device the OP listed is "discontinued" but i'd bet that PCI adapter was more than 40 bucks before adding CF cards.

I use a CF card in my SNES flash cart, it was like $18 for a 4GB IIRC.

40 bucks isn't bad if you already have a Sata PCI card. Not alot of space.

When did money 40 kill a purchase anyways, I see alot of you dos sound purist dropping $100+ on equipment easy 😉 Hehe

EDIT: Question: anyone think that Quad-CF would do 90MB read/ 30MB write like the 8GB SSD?!

Oh, and hope this isn't seen as mean or trolling as it not meant to be.