I've seen this discussed before, but you've thought it through well; I agree that a specialized distro would be a good idea. (I'm finding this to be a more and more common solution to problems...earlier this evening, I unsuccessfully looked for a good MythTV frontend LiveCD that seamlessly supports wireless PCMCIA cards well. No such animal that I can find. [KnoppMyth -- no joy] That's another opportunity).

And the "adapters for Laptop mini-IDE to compact flash are under $10" throwaway comment was GREAT! I tracked that down on Ebay, and will be buying one of those for sure. I've got a couple of machines that might work great with. Thanks again, Brad.