What you need is a CF (Compact Flash) card to IDE adaptor. I've seen CF cards up to four gigs out now. Just bought a 40X two gig SD (Secure Digital flash) card for under US$80 FWIW. Prices have finally come down to a level where it might be practical for a real PC. Was thinking of using CF to IDE adaptors in a RAID 0 array to improve performance too.
Anyway, interfaced with your system this way you don't need any PC BIOS support or hotplug/SCSI emulation in OS. It's completely transparent to the PC hardware and OS, in other words.