document updated 12 years ago, on Feb 24, 2012

Some (but not all? not many?) computers can boot from a compact-flash attached via the PCMCIA port.

Niggling details to deal with:

the CF card has to be marked as a "fixed disk", instead of "removable". Some cards are able to be configured this way, but many aren't. [1] [2]
the BIOS has to support booting via PCMCIA-attached hard drives and/or CDROMs
- note: however, there are workarounds if this isn't the case
getting the disk geometry correct can be fiddly [1]