There used to be a page out there somewhere about installing a cf card in a 5300. I think it was on a blog. As I recall, the partitioning needed to be done on another machine in that case, or prior to installation via booting from the hd and working with the cf card in a pcmcia adapter — or something — i.e., there did seem to be peculiarities.

I looked at it some years ago when I put a cf in a 2300c, but I did not have the same runaround with that machine in the end. The cf card worked from the start.