Centrios CompactFlash Card USB Reader

I got me a Centrios CompactFlash Card USB Reader today from RadioShack.
It cost me C$19.99 and I asked them if I could test it before I bought it on my own computer, and they said sure. So I brought in my Trillium laptop running Debian Sid and plugged it in. The sales rep was all interested in watching it boot (pretty boring) and even more interested to see if it worked. Kinda neat. He mentioned Knoppix, and I mentioned Ubuntu. :)

Anyhow, I plugged the thing in, put my 8MB card in, and it read it. Then I unmounted it, put my 64MB card in, and it read it too. I told him I'd take it and pressed the power button (gotta love ACPI when it's set up properly).

So now I finally have a cheap solution that works better than using Windows 98 on an old Pentium 133 with 16MB of RAM and a parallel port reader that's slow and annoying.

The technical details, in case you are wondering, are:

Manufacturer: Centrios
Cat No.: 441-8948
Media: CompactFlash (CF)
Color: Silver and Metallic Blue
Driver: usb-storage (I assume, it Just Worked(tm) for me)

I hope this page helps someone out there. I wrote it because I couldn't find anything on the Net about it before I went to RadioShack to pick one up today.

--Dana Olson

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