SCSI to IDE bridges...

[Jim Brain]

Gene Buckle wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Doc Shipley wrote:
>
>> Chuck Guzis wrote:
>>>
>>> I've toyed with the idea of setting up a Linux box with a 
>>> decent-size (512M) hunk of RAM,turning off swap and using it as a 
>>> network mailserver with CF instead of IDE disk to conserve power.  
>>> I'm not sure how long the CF would last.  Assuming, say, 1000 emails 
>>> (including spam) a day worst-case, I might see one fail in less than 
>>> a year, depending upon where the writes landed.  Leveling would 
>>> help, of course, but do CF cards auto-level, or does that 
>>> responsibility fall upon the system using them?
>>
>>  I can vouch for the fact that running a normal OS on CF will kill 
>> the card in a hurry, even without swap.
>>
>
> Doc, there's a whole pile of Amiga users out there (found 'em today!) 
> that would argue that point with you.  They're using them a lot on the 
> Amiga 1200, 500 and 2000 without issue.
>
> g.
>
>
If you run Linux with the CF marked as a normal HD, it will cause issues 
(any file access will touch the FS), but I think the newer Linux kernels 
have an option to turn that off for certain drives.

I can vouch that running Linux with a CF does not kill the card, at 
least when configured to use CF.  Pyramid Linux is a special distro used 
for folks who want to gateway their cellular air cards to Wifi.  It 
mounts the entire OS as read-only, with a small RAM disk to handle logs 
and stuff that needs to be R/W.

Jim


-- 
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations                                      (X)
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