Saturday, 26 July 2008
New EFIS computer booting from Compact Flash
In the end, it was simple, just let the installer do it's thing, including NTFS file system. What I thought needed to be done was stick with FAT32, but that was nothing but problems. So in that regard the advice of the masses of internet posts was amazingly wrong. I did learn a bit about MBRs and boot records, but I would have prefered just to get things working. I currently have a 1Ghz fanless "Nano-ITX" board booting off compact flash in about 45 seconds. I think I can reduce that further by trimming some services, and using Minlogon, which supposedly speeds up logins. As it stands though, I do have a working computer that would probably hold up until SSDs get cheaper (and in stock, can't find a OCZ core anywhere)
Also, there is a tool to try called EWF, or EFW.. er, anyway, it makes the drive read only, which means the CF will last just that much longer. The main task now however is to mount this thing back in the plane.
