[syslinux] memdisk and usb flash devices as primary hard drives.

[Dag Wieers]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Quinn wrote:

> Addendum to the above tests:
> 
> I just tried booting a gzipped compressed hard disk image with the usb key in
> - same problem - hangs just after memdisk
> loads the image to ram and tries to boot.  If I take the key out, then the
> problem goes away.
> 
> Also, after re-reading the subject line - I can see that it might be misread
> incorrectly.
> It should probably be read as "memdisk with usb flash devices as primary hard
> drives."

Hi,

You're not the only one with problems. I have not talked to anyone who was 
able to boot memdisk/DOS and some other OSes using USB. (Linux 2.4 
seems to work, most others don't) hpa says this is a bug with certain 
BIOSes, still it is weird that Linux can work around it.

I have tried with various thinkpad models, xSeries hardware and my own
systems at home. None work, different BIOS vendors.

Here are some threads about this issue, I finally gave up.

        http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-January/002999.html
        http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-January/003001.html
	http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-January/003018.html
        http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-January/003087.html
        http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-January/003089.html

Let me know if you can make it work !

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]