Has any tried one of those cheap IDE->SATA converter boards? Other than the obvious heat advantages, an SSD would be wasted, unless you mean a compact flash card which is a good idea 
Yep I tried it (because I'm a bit crazy). I didn't get very far, I also tried it with both a FAST-ATA and an IdeFixExpress.
The problem is that the SATA SSD drive is not visible to the system using the standard 3.1 ROM, it's only after booting that you can load the newer drivers and use the drive. So basically, you can use them as a second drive (with a secondary interface) but you can't use them as a boot drive.
I settled on a nice neat solution for my 1200, I've now got a SSD 16GB module directly mounted on an IdeFixExpress (4.6 MB/s).
