I hate to reply to my own thread, but would a compact flash/sd card to IDE adapter work in this application? example :
https://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Compa...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0F1R47NABV4Q0WM8C2DY
I have a Bondi Blue Rev B iMac G3 (with Sonnet 500 MHz logicboard upgrade -via craiglist)
which I installed this IDE to CF adapter:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TMDE6G
Once the 3.5" HDD was removed, I remember a lot of room in the area.
So I just had the ribbon, power cable, adapter/CF card floating, though carefully inspecting that nothing would short-out from accidental electrical contact (maybe I did put a non-static-wrapper floating in there too, can't remember exactly).
MagicBoy's correct about CF cards & constant OSX writing
(virtual memory action as I understand it, could be other things).
However, I use my sub-800 GHz PPCs mainly for Mac OS 9 & under, usually Virtual Memory off.
None of them are daily drivers - They're more like, well today I feel like playing around with one of them.
I did make a Panther partition in the CF card though,
just because I could & I took into account the CF/OSX caveat.
My Bondi has a fan (noticeable hum),
but I did think of a CF card contributing to a cooler environment compared to a 7200 rpm IDE drive.
My Bondi's CRT flicker-clicks every once in a while so its lifespan is on its way out.
I've never nailed down the real specs for the Bondi's real IDE speed.
I suspect it was really like 16 not 33 (like the HDD specs) &
Apple installed those clunky slow 5400 rpm cheap drives.
So the CF card I chose at the time, speed/price-wise, was this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FO4QHI
I thought anything faster would be redundant.
I also have the same adapter/CF card setup in my PowerMac 6500.
Here's a screenshot of the Bondi's System Profiler/Devices and Volumes:
EDIT:
In case anyone is wondering about the two PCI Slot listings in the System Profiler screenshot,
1) Original "hidden mezzanine" slot which has the iMac VooDoo card (8MB VRAM)
2) Sonnet upgraded logicboard's single Firewire port
Also the Internal ATA 0 listing has Panther iMac formated as Mac OS Extended (HFS+)
But when booted in Panther, the System Profiler lists File System: Journaled HFS+