G1-ATA Devices

[OzOnE]

Yes, you should be able to use the GD drive as normal if you boot the DC with a disk in.

The IDE device on the adapter must be set to Slave, and it only works via the new Dreamshell atm (to be released when it's ready.

So far, I haven't found that a CF card or HDD has interfered with booting a GD disk.
SWAT and others can probably confirm this though.

There are a few risks with using the adapter, because the GD drive bus operates at 3.3V, and most IDE HDD's work at 5V.

The DC can handle it fine, as the pins on the HOLLY chip for the G1 bus are 5V tolerant, and it has series resistors to protect it.
But, there's a very tiny chance that it could damage the GD drive in some way.

When set up properly, the Slave device / GD drive should be working independently though, so has been fine so far.

OzOnE