OK, made a trip to Micro Center and grabbed a cheap IDE to CF adapter by Syba for $11.99 and a 32GB compact flash card by Kingston for $90(ouch, I know I could get them cheaper online but I'm tired of my boss on my back about it) and a refurb 40GB HD for $15 if the CF didn't work. After all, this is just a test, I'll order the main stuff online and save money (50% probably).
So I hooked it all up and everything loaded onto the CF in normal speed, let it go through its first boot stuff, registrations and what not and set all the settings and everything is working great again. The total boot time from power on to being able to credit it up went from 40 seconds down to 30 seconds. No real big time saving there but, NO MORE HARD DRIVE!!
I might pull the card out later and see how much of the card is used and go smaller next time.
Why don't the manufacturers just use them to begin with and just add that measly $100 to the price and save the repair guy that amount in down time and tracking down old technology a couple years down the road? [/rant]
Thanks guys for the info and hopefully this will help other owners down the road!