Lampdog wrote:ATAPI is hot swappable, IDE is not, same connector and everything, just diff communication protocol. I’ve used both, I have ATAPI MCD in my 2kxl.
As far as I can remember, ATAPI and IDE are the same thing. They both communicate over the IDE bus but where it gets confusing is whether the media the workstation is reading is identified as fixed disk vs removable mode. [These modes can be configured accordingly through formatting / partition managers]
Now how this relates to the type of card readers we have also pertains to the type we're using. So the "hot swappable" IDE card readers have an on board controller to handle the removable device mode where as other cheaper card readers (So the commonly used Startech ones or the 5 dollar eBay ones, which in most cases are the exact same ones Startech is using) are simple CF to IDE pass through devices -- Hence the card reader does not know how to address when a card is removed.
Going back to the whole fixed disk / removable disk mode thing creates a separate layer compatibility issues and is also the basis on whether or not you can use a CF card to boot off of or not. So what I've found with CF cards not reading on my XL, if i format it on the PC, setting the partition as bootable device causes it to suddenly work fine in my XL where as prior to that, it either would not read or if it did it would cause the XL's screen to show up all scrambled.
Have a look at this for reference:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive