How to install Fedora 7 to a CF card connected via IDE-CF adapter?

[Jim Cornette]

Alan Cox wrote:
> CF should work. There are problems with some combinations of CF card and
> adapter as newer cards often do MWDMA or UDMA but the older adapters
> don't support this - a fact you can't autodetect.
> 
> It's also important to understand CF cards have two modes. When plugged
> into an IDE cable via a convertor they act as if they were disk devices
> and you should be able to install onto them without problem. If you plug
> them into a PCMCIA card they appear as removable media and I suspect
> Anaconda won't consider them a viable install target.
> 
> Alan
> 

Thanks for the info regarding the newer cards and the Maximum Multi Word 
DMA (MWDMA) mode and Ultra DMA mode newer CF devices may use. The 
embedded devices have ide=nodma for SanDisk 64 MB cards and 128 MB cards 
to prevent lockups. Newer CF cards fail to work in these devices. I'll 
try removing the parameter to see if it allows newer and larger capacity 
CF cards to work on the power PC devices.

Your point regarding Anaconda seeing the card as a removable device 
sounds like it is causing no media to be detected. For USB hard disks 
running the installer in expert mode allowed detection of USB connected 
hard disks, maybe expert mode will allow detection of the CF adapter 
mounted devices. The original poster mentioned something to the effect 
that BIOS recognized the cards as 4 GB, a point I overlooked when 
"reading" and overlooking the original post content.

Jim

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