USB booting :: Booting DSL via PCMCIA card reader

I have a Sharp MM20 with a broken HD so I'm putting it to use again with DSL. The problem is that having a USB flash drive sticking out of the computer is pretty annoying so I was wondering if it'd be possible to run DSL from my PCMCIA memory card reader. Unfortunately my computer doesn't support booting off of the card reader so I was wondering if it's possible for me to use a USB flash drive as a bootdisk. The card reader supposedly uses the PCMCIA ide standard, and when I plug it in while running DSL off the USB flash drive it shows up as /dev/hde.

original here.