[mythtv-users] eee PC FLASH_CON Drives

[Nick Rout]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Jeff Wormsley <daworm at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'm using a Zotac ION board with no CPU fan and the laptop style power
> supply.  It's silent, except for the hard drive.  Even the laptop drive I
> have in it makes too much noise for a bedroom install.  I could spend
> another $100 or so for an SDD drive, which is way bigger than I need, and
> I've tried netbooting but had issues with it, and I've tried using USB
> sticks and had little success there as well (the only "good" stick I had
> laying around is only 2G, and I can't seem to fit all I want into that
> amount of space, and the 4G and 8G ones I've tried don't work well at all as
> boot devices).
>
> I also have two eeePC units, a 900 and a 901, and I've upgraded both to
> bigger SSD modules, which means I have two 4G SSD's and an 8G SSD collecting
> dust.  I figured these would be perfect, and they were made for booting PCs,
> unlike USB flash drives.  Problem is, I can only find one board to convert
> the FLASH_CON SSD into a PATA drive (or better, a SATA drive, but I have a
> working PATA/SATA adapter).  It requires a PCI Express slot for power, and
> my MB doesn't have one, and I'd rather not hack into something like that,
> and I also found it to be a tad expensive.  So I figured I'd build my own.
>  I've started designing a circuit board that has a FLASH_CON connector, an
> IDE header, and since the FLASH_CON supports USB and SATA, I've added a SATA
> connector and USB-A connector, as well as a 4 pin floppy power connector and
> 3.3V regulator to power the drive.  I've almost finished it, but I was
> wondering if anyone else be interested in one of these boards?  I figure it
> won't cost that much more to make a panel than to just make a couple, but
> stuffing them would cost a bit (I don't expect those MiniPCIe connectors to
> be cheap), and it would be nice if I could get some of the cost back, and
> maybe help out someone else who needs such a thing.  I certainly hold no
> illusions of making riches off of it.  Hopefully board and parts (and if I
> can get a good deal, professional stuffing of the parts, as my soldering
> skills are only mediocre) won't cost more than $10 to $20 if I build
> several, but that would depend on someone else wanting the boards I don't
> use.
> Would anyone else be interested in such a board?  Or am I the only MythTV
> user who happens to have a bunch of FLASH_CON SSD drives gathering dust?
>
> Jeff.

Sounds like a good project. When I started to read your post I though
of this recent post to our local LUG mailing list, which may solve
this sort of problem. Of course by the time I finished your post, I
realised you weren't after a solution, but I'd already started to
reply so I'll put it up here after all:

"A few weeks ago, I reported that the 8G SSD on my Acer Aspire One
netbook had failed, and asking for recommendations about where to buy
a replacement. I could not find anything within my budget ($0), or
less than my comfort level ($10), or within my unbudgetted spending
allowance.

However, I did find a very small micro SD card reader, where the micro
SD card fits inside the metal shell of the USB connector, leaving a
7mm plastic tab sticking out of the USB socket. The micro SD card fits
where the little plastic support in the USB plug.

I ordered one of these for US$5 and a 8G micro SD card for US$10 from
Deal Extreme. It arrived within 10 days and was recognised just as
expected.

So I did the following:

* downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Live CD ISO
* created a bootable installation of the UNR Live ISO on a different
1G USB flash drive, using the USB startup disk creator.
* set the BIOS to boot from USB hard drive
* booted the netbook from the UNR Live flash drive
* inserted the micro SD card reader with the 8G card into the netbook
* installed UNR onto the 8G micro SD card
* shutdown the computer and removed the UNR Live flash drive
* rebooted using the installed version of UNR on the micro SD card reader

It all booted just fine!

It now takes just over a minute to boot from the micro SD card reader,
as opposed to the 15s to boot UNR from the SSD. However, at a cost of
about $25, I can now use the netbook again."