[syslinux] Problem booting from CF/SD cards and USB Flashdrives using syslinux
c.lee111 at gmail.com
c.lee111 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 23 18:23:58 PDT 2007
On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> c.lee111 at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > This one. It only applied to really old versions of lilo from before
> > 2000 or so and was fixed in newer versions of lilo ages ago.
> >
>
> And, pray tell, what made you think that syslinux is affected by this?
>
> Syslinux has *never* used static determination of geometry, except on
> floppies. Syslinux 3.00+ will use EBIOS (LBA) if available.
>
> -hpa
>
Well something is going on that has to do with the geometry of SD/CF
cards and USB Flashdrives and I don't think it all has to do with with
the BIOS USB ZIP issue either. I'm tending to think Syslinux maybe
is touchy in reguards to what drive geometry (number of cylinders
in particular) a usb SD/CF card or USB flashdrive is formatted with.
Like I said before it's pretty much the only thing that would explain
why usb cards and flashdrives I formatted to be bootable under windows
98 would boot, (and they weren't patitioned using zip drive or floppy
geometry) but the same cards and drives wouldn't boot on the same
machine using syslinux untill I went and changed the card or drive
geometry to either 64 32 or 255 63 using mkdiskimage under linux, which
basically changed the number of cylinders from being over 1024 to
being under 1024.
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