Make sure you have the flash card reader plugged in as the IDE primary master (not secondary master, not a slave drive). I just ran into this in a case where the customer plugged the CDROM drive into the primary IDE, and the hard drive into the secondary. The hard drive (or CF reader) then becomes /dev/hdc instead of /dev/hda, and it won't work.
Also check your CMOS Setup screen and verify that any on-chip SATA controller is Disabled.
During the boot process, Linux tells you what IDE devices it detects, and what device assignments they got. You want to see "hda:" displayed, followed by something you might recognize as your compact flash card (e.g. Sandisk this or Lexar that...). You should probably also see "hdc:" followed by the make/model of your CDROM drive. |