mine is a 1670G it boots from flash and saves stuff to disk but if its apps are on disk it will load them from disk (symbols, analyzer, pattern gen etc). the 1670G is basically the 16500, its treated as as a 2 or 3 slot according to the system.
I wondered about replacing the 44pin 2.5" ibm IDE disk drive with a cf card, if it will speed it up or not anything noticeable