[Peeweelinux] Compact Flash

[Leif Steinhour]

Okay, a bunch of people have written about this, so I want to set some 
things straight.

Here's what I think is going on:

1). PWL is probably having even more problems running under RH 8.x than it 
did under 7.x. My advice: go back and install 6.2 (that's right) on your 
development platform. You should be able to get it online, it will make 
your life much easier. 
2). This stuff about things not working on Compact flash is half nonsense. 
IDE Compact flash cards are pin-compatible with ide hard disks (if you 
look online they even sell header boards which route all the signals 
without modifying them), so Pee Wee runs fine on both ATA compact flash 
and ATA PCMCIA cards. There are some cards that are sold as "memory" cards 
that do not have the IDE circuitry built in that will not work (as BOOT 
devices, but fine for storing info once card services is loaded), but if 
you get a card that says it shows up as an ide device then it will work 
provided the card is working (flash drives can wear out). If you have 
questions about a given card that you have, plug it in to a machine that 
has the pcmcia drivers and utlities installed properly and see what 
cardinfo/cardctl have to say about the device.

Pee Wee will automatically (thanks Adi!) do all of the partitioning, so 
all you need to figure out is where on the development platform the target 
device is installed and tell pwlconfig in one of the setup screens. For 
compact flash and PCMCIA devices, either during startup or when the device 
is inserted it should tell you, for instance "/dev/hde1". You can use the 
dmesg command to show information about the boot, otherwise it should 
print the info to your console during a card insertion. Make sure you're 
not using your host drive as the target, or you will not be happy with the 
results. The command df will tell you where your host drives are mounted 
so you can check. 
3). If you are installing pee wee on a Disk on Chip, then you need to do 
more work, because the kernel you use must have the right drivers, and I 
will refer the reader to past posts in the archives for the appropriate 
info. 


On 2003.04.22 17:55 Correy Edmed wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I am currently at work experience and trying to set up peewee linux. I 
> have a PCM-3350 GX1 300Mhz Embedded PC and have a Sandisk 256M Compact 
> Flash card that I want to install the operating system on.
> 
> I have heard bad reports about formatting and partitioning CF cards and 
> this is where I am up to at the moment. I guess I need to partition the 
> CF card with a boot sector (hda1)  OS (hda2) and swap (hda3).
> 
> I have already experimented with the embedded PC using an ide HDD that I 
> have installed Redhat 8 on. The CF card just arrived and I placed it in 
> the CompactFlash socket and it is recognised in the bios as an ide 
> device however I have no idea on how to mount it.
> 
> While reading about PCMCIA I noticed in relation to CF cards about 
> "ftl_format -i /dev/mem0c0c" however this file (mem0c0c) isn't even in 
> my dev directory. Also after reading the man page for ftl_format I 
> noticed that you are able to create a boot secotor which perhaps is what 
> I need.
> 
> Any help on setting up the Compact Flash Card so I can start installing 
> peewee linux would be much appreciated.
> 
> Correy
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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