I also got a game loader menu by launching autoexec in one of the game folders. When I loaded the game the MSX rebooted and would then only run that game until i power-cycled.
That game loader menu was in russian by the way, so it will be a bit difficult to use unless you know that language!
I have one and it works fine. I didn't bought with the CF card. I have formatted and partitioned my own card with usual tools for Sunrise CF.
Take care : impossible to flash the bios and impossible to instal Nextor Kernel.
I will see in time the hardware quality (sure, the original Sunrise CF was better).
One trial and error tip I want to give you:
On a partitionized CF card be VERY careful with your AUTOEXEC.BAT!
If you make an error in it which causes a loop or whatever error which you can't recover from, you will have NO way to fix that on your MSX.
Huh? Since this is just "another drive for MSX", shouldn't you be able to boot from f.ex. floppy disk, and use the tools available there to fix any problems you might have made on your CF?
And yes, if you have a MSX with a functional floppy drive, I'd definitely recommend preparing your own "rescue disk" after you get it running. I had this idea from the beginning, but postponed it until I had corrupted the boot block once (and that wasn't even on windows...)
As for CF-IDE vs. MegaFlashRom, afaik CF-IDE is considerably older than all MegaFlashRom, and so are most "Best device on the market" reviews / comments.
Key differences (correct me if I'm wrong!)
MegaFlashRom has separate read only boot partiion
MegaFlashRom has *MicroSD slot instead of CompactFlash
MegaFlashRom has *512k memory expansion (CF-IDE has none)
MegaFlashRom has flash memory for flashing MSX ROM images & running them from the cart
MegaFlashRom has SCC emulation (sound chip used on quite a few Konami games, for example)
MegaFlashRom can mount floppy disk images
(Features marked with * are optional, I'd recommend paying a bit more to get them)
So basically "allowing to use memory card as MSX partitions" is more or less the only common feature. MegaFlashRom offers much more. Can't really think of anything where it would be worse than CF-IDE.
After saying all that, CF-IDE is still quite nice device, and if you have enough memory (and if you don't, you can use external memory expansion, as provided with f.ex. Playsoniq), you can load most rom images with specific tools. All "HD installable" software should work on both without problems.
Wow, so much bad advice here. I'll write a post about it on my blog soon. I'm also using a Sunrise IDE-CF.