SanDiskCfReader

How to configure a !SanDisk USB !CompactFlash card reader under Linux

This reader is very handy if you happen to have a digital camera that users compact flash cards. Instead of using the slow serial connection, you can just pop the CF card in to your reader and grab all the pictures at once.

The reader is accessed as a SCSI disk, via the SCSI emulation layer.

• Make sure you have scsi emulation enabled in your kernel. You need some /etc/modules.conf entries like this to make everything work automatically:

options ide-cd ignore='hdc hde' alias scd0 sr_mod alias scd1 sr_mod pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd post-install scsi_mod modprobe ide-scsi

• Connect device to USB port, check /var/log/messages for indication that it was found and initialized.
• If you have cdrecord installed, do a 'cdrecord -scanbus'. This will autoload all the scsi modules. If you have everything configured correctly, you should see a new scsi bus with just the CF card reader on it.
• Insert a card into the card reader.
• Mount it as a SCSI filesystem (DOS formatted seems to be the usual setup):

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/cf

You can then use the disk as a hard drive. don't forget to unmount it before removing the card from the reader.

I also got a USB mouse working the other day, I will post that info is anyone is interested.