What makes an IDE device bootable

Greetings - I am hoping to throw out the CF cards that our systems are
currently booting off of and replace them with a micro-SD/transflash
memory card. I found this really nice looking single chip solution:
http://www.zentek.com/product_sd_cg200.htm - but I have no idea if it
would be possible to boot off of it. How can you tell? If it matters -
our systems are running QNX.

Thanks!

-Michael

Michael wrote:

> but I have no idea if it would be possible to boot off of it. How can
> you tell?

That's more an issue of what the bootloader/firmware in the device 
requires than a feature of the IDE device.  The same device that boots 
in an IBM PC just fine probably wouldn't be considered bootable by, say, 
a Unix workstation or an Amiga.

On Aug 23, 8:10 am, Michael <nleah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings - I am hoping to throw out the CF cards that our systems are
> currently booting off of and replace them with a micro-SD/transflash
> memory card. I found this really nice looking single chip solution:http://www.zentek.com/product_sd_cg200.htm- but I have no idea if it
> would be possible to boot off of it. How can you tell? If it matters -
> our systems are running QNX.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Michael

What -typically- makes an IDE device bootable is the contents of
sector 0.  This is absolutely dependent on your BIOS, of course.

>From a brief glance at the data sheet, it seems that this controller
emulates an IDE device, so "in theory" you should be able to boot from
it the same way you boot from your CF cards (provided that you're
running your CF in IDE mode.)

If it were me, I'd buy one of these: <http://www.zentek.com/
product_sd_mdrv.htm> and try it!

G.