Something is choking the speed on the PCMCIA on your 540. The 520/540/550's are the only Powerbooks with a PCMCIA slots that was part of an upgrade package and not built in, and as such has its own CPU controlling that on top of the Powerbook's expansion module and are indirectly patched with buffers onto the data bus. In other Powerbooks the PCMCIA are tied directly to the Powerbook's expansion module chip and directly to the data bus.
But the CF on the 520/540/550 should be a lot faster than a hard drive through the PCMCIA. I do not trust a lot of benchmarking software, even though they measure things that says how things are. I do notice that the CF is at least twice as fast than a hard drive on the IDE BUS. Boot Times, Application Load Times, Application Quit Times, and ShutdownTimes is seconds on a CF when compared to a hard drive on the IDE Bus. The CF is almost twice as as fast as that on the PCMCIA than on the IDE BUS. This should be reflected as similar with the SCSI Bus.
My work is on the PB 190/5300/1400/etc. - all Powerbooks with IDE Buses. Using the 190 as a standard, it boots from Smiley Mac to Desktop in under a minute with System 7.6.1 on the PCMCIA - about 45 seconds. It takes the hard drive over 3 minutes for it to load up. With the CF on the IDE Bus, booting it about a minute and a half, still faster than the hard drive. But benchmarking software would says, "Blah Blah Blah CF Drive loads a 5K file 100X in over three minutes..." which is not what it is reflected in the real world actions.
Think; 5K X 100 is 500K, which it takes the benchmarking software to load in thee minutes. But it boots up a 1 - 4 meg System Files, who knows how many extensions, and finally a 500K to 1.2meg Finder before it gets to Desktop in under a minute. So who is lying? Sometimes it is better to sit there with a stop watch and see how long it takes from Smiley Mac to Finder, Application Load, Application Quit and Shut Down than to let some program tell you otherwise.
But the CF on the 520/540/550 should be a lot faster than a hard drive through the PCMCIA. I do not trust a lot of benchmarking software, even though they measure things that says how things are. I do notice that the CF is at least twice as fast than a hard drive on the IDE BUS. Boot Times, Application Load Times, Application Quit Times, and ShutdownTimes is seconds on a CF when compared to a hard drive on the IDE Bus. The CF is almost twice as as fast as that on the PCMCIA than on the IDE BUS. This should be reflected as similar with the SCSI Bus.
My work is on the PB 190/5300/1400/etc. - all Powerbooks with IDE Buses. Using the 190 as a standard, it boots from Smiley Mac to Desktop in under a minute with System 7.6.1 on the PCMCIA - about 45 seconds. It takes the hard drive over 3 minutes for it to load up. With the CF on the IDE Bus, booting it about a minute and a half, still faster than the hard drive. But benchmarking software would says, "Blah Blah Blah CF Drive loads a 5K file 100X in over three minutes..." which is not what it is reflected in the real world actions.
Think; 5K X 100 is 500K, which it takes the benchmarking software to load in thee minutes. But it boots up a 1 - 4 meg System Files, who knows how many extensions, and finally a 500K to 1.2meg Finder before it gets to Desktop in under a minute. So who is lying? Sometimes it is better to sit there with a stop watch and see how long it takes from Smiley Mac to Finder, Application Load, Application Quit and Shut Down than to let some program tell you otherwise.