Re: Are we sure it's time to throw something else out?
Also used work on Windows Embedded boxes that boot off CF cards (that kit is still in service and should have years left in its life - no, it isn't connected to the Internet).
At home, still have a perfectly functional CF bootable mini-ITX mainboard system, ready to be put back into service.
The problem nowadays is that IDE is only one of the modes that CF supports and the later cards stopped supplying it. So have gone from "any of the CF cards work to boot from" in the days of 512MB cards to "you suddenly pay a massive surcharge for a card that actually follows the whole spec" which made, say, a 4GB CF too costly to be worth it.
And three guesses whether an up to date copy of the OS that used to fit in 512MB will now even fit onto the 4GB card if I'd bought it! Annoying, as the 512MB card is in perfect nick (it only got read at boot, never written to during normal use). Ah well, at least SSDs are more affordable now than bootable CF cards.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
