Preparation of CompactFlash card

["Rev. Jack Swindell" <jack@xxxxxxxxxx>]

OK - So I was a bit slow figuring this one out.  After I found a SanDisk
32MB CompactFlash card with one of the part numbers already known to work,
and then peeled the top metal cover off of my "Type II" PCCARD adapter to
reduce its thickness down to "Type I" (just slides out with the "Eject"
lever now)  I still had a problem.  I loaded the SunDisk/SanDisk driver,
then did the SDISK and SFORMAT and the PC3K saw the card just fine.  I used
Laplink and loaded it with compilers and various other tools.  Worked great.
So - I thought that I'd pop it into a PCCARD slot on my Fujitsu Point 510
pen tablet and copy some files back and forth.  Plug and Play recognized the
card as a SanDisk and loaded the appropriate ATA driver.  Then I went to
look at the card while it was in the Fujitsu (running Windows 98SE) and it
didn't see anything there.  Odd, I plugged it back into the PC3K "B:" drive
PCCARD slot #2 and when I went to the PC3K DOS prompt, everything was still
there.

Then I realized what I hadn't thought of.  Although the card had been
partitioned (SDISK) and flash-formatted (SFORMAT), I hadn't used the higher
level DOS FORMAT after that.  So, I ran the PC3K DOS FORMAT command on the
compact flash card in the B: drive and then changed to B: as the default
drive and used the DOS LABEL command to give it a name.  So far so good.
Now at a DOS prompt, the PC3K still saw the flash card, and it showed the
volume label name along with the date and time of creation that I'd given
it.  The PC3K DOS CHKDSK command showed it as having 31,981,568 bytes
available.  I shut off the PC3K and put the CompactFlash card in its PCMCIA
adapter back into my Fujitsu pen tablet and lo and behold, it saw it as a
valid drive.  Windows 98SE reported:

31,981,568 bytes total disk space (and also available on the disk)
4,096 bytes in each allocation unit
7,808 total allocation units on disk (and also available)

I just copied the archive that I had prepared to load into the PC3K flash
from the Fujitsu's hard drive onto the CompactFlash card and popped it back
into the "B:" (slot 2) PCMCIA card slot and it worked.  It was a LOT faster
than the original go-round with Laplink.  The PC3K sees the files fine from
the DOS prompt, and all of the software that I loaded on the card runs.
CHKDSK is happy.  I still get the

**************************
* Invalid PCMCIA card B: *
**************************

Message during a reboot, and of course the built in "File manager" has no
idea what to do with the B: drive, so it just leaves it out of the drive
list.  I've read of other software that can be used on the mailing list in
its place, but I always use the DOS prompt anyway.

I can't believe that I was forgetting to follow the SDISK and SFORMAT with
the DOS FORMAT, but I was.  I just thought I'd mention my embarrassing tale
in case another newbie comes along.  Just to save them from the time that I
wasted.

Best wishes to all,
Jack