I've now replaced my Microdrive and my Zaurus is still alive! I was helped by this guide:
http://www.ayati.com/kobako/c3bara.htm (
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...ko%2Fc3bara.htm )
The only thing I didn't do that the guide did was disconnect the two ribbon cables as I didn't fancy trying to reconnect them.
Although the hdparm results below seem to indicate liitle gain in R/W performance, I am happy to report my Z boots up a full 10s faster now! Not a bad upgrade for £15! £10 if you exclude the postage. I should imagine I should get slightly better battery life now too and the extra space always helps!
Seeing as my new wifi card is getting delivered to work I won't get that until at least Monday now so I think I will try to get my current wifi card working as I'm keen to actually use my Z after spending most of this week setting it up.
Next time you update the kernel tarball I think it'd be a good idea to include the keymap and a short README on how to configure the keymap, where to place the kernel modules etc- basically extract the key bits of info from this thread in case OESF disappears. I don't think github is going away any time soon.
Kingston 32GB Ultimate 266X ext4
kexec menu to login prompt boot time: 39s
hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
cached reads: 51.78 MB/s
buffered disk reads: 2.56 MB/s
hdparm -Tt --direct /dev/sda
cached reads: 2.06 MB/s
disk reads: 2.07 MB/s
sync;time bash -c "(dd if=/dev/zero of=bf bs=8k count=25000; sync)"
2.4MB/s (write speed)
1m 29s real