[Duo2400] Re: PCMICA with the New Little G4 PowerBook

[Ivan Drucker]

>Ivan:
>
>On the 2400, one can currently boot from an external PCMCIA drive, OS9 is
>known to work. I haven't experimented with booting OS10 externally, though
>the drive is mountable since 10.2. I believe one can boot from an external
>USB and FW drives with the New World firmware. Would someone please verify
>this?

Yes, I've booted my 2400 from PCMCIA many times. However, I don't think 
10.2 could work because 10.2 requires Open Firmware to boot, whereas I 
think the PCMCIA boot capability is handled by the Apple ROM (which gets 
invoked after Open Firmware), and efforts I've made to "see" the PCMCIA 
drive from Open Firmware on my 2400 over the years have failed. So in 
other words I just don't think the drive is really visible until OS X is 
fully loaded. But you've piqued my curiosity, so maybe I'll give it a 
shot.

You can boot from FW drives with the New World firmware, with the 
exception of the Blue & White G3's, and the early low-end "PCI Graphics" 
(aka Yikes!) G4 which was based on the same motherboard. You cannot boot 
a USB drive on any Mac to the best of my knowledge; I certainly can't 
with my iBook 600. It would be pretty unpleasant, actually, to run from a 
USB drive, because USB is quite slow (1.5 MB/sec, or Mac Plus-era SCSI 
speeds).

>http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/pocket_udd.asp
>
>Here is a link of such a product. It supports both USB and Firewire. So
>this might just give enough incentive for one to migrate from a 2400 to
>the new 12" Powerbook.

Okay, right. As I thought, this is just a device for handling storage, 
which is much more understandable to me than a true "USB to PCMCIA" 
adapter, which I don't think could exist, at least not without major OS 
hackery.

There are a lot of adapters like this. This adapter is more expensive 
than most, because it supports USB 2.0 and FireWire, and accomodates full 
size PCMCIA drives. On the downside, it's large, and you need 
PCMCIA-sized adapter cards to handle most of the common media types, 
unlike other readers which provide you with multiple slots.

The common formats one usually needs are Compact Flash/MicroDrive, Smart 
Media, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital, or Memory Stick. With CF cards 
now available in 512 MB and up, and the 1 GB IBM MicroDrive, I don't 
think there's much need for a PCMCIA drive, so I would rather have a 
smaller, less expensive, adapter. I have a 4-in-1 reader (CF/MD, SM, MMC) 
that's REALLY tiny, easily fits in a pocket, and the cable is integrated. 
(I can't find it now, but there's a similar one at 
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=20-174-104&depa=1 
and it's only $25 plus it supports MS and SD.)

There are lots of these products, and none of them require drivers, so 
you might want to shop around. The adapter you pointed out, while more 
expensive, has the advantage of supporting FireWire, so in theory if you 
had a Toshiba 2 GB PCMCIA hard drive, or a 1 GB IBM MicroDrive, perhaps 
you could boot X from it (remember, 9 won't boot). But would you really 
want to?

Ivan.