[syslinux] Any way to boot a CD if no BIOS support & CD-ROM is not 100% standard?

Scott Thornley scott at sathornley.net
Tue Nov 22 11:51:25 PST 2005


Grub might do what you want.

Create a GRUB boot floppy. Make one of the options in menu.lst point to 
a kernel image on a linux CD.This link describes how to create a 
bootable GRUB CD, but the techniques would seem to apply to your case:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Making-a-GRUB-bootable-CD-ROM.html

Regards,
Scott


Nazo wrote:

>On 11/19/05, Geert Stappers <stappers at stappers.nl> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 11:58:30PM -0600, Nazo wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I originally asked in a hardware/software forum, but, got basically no
>>>results.  It occured to me that if anyone would know, it would be you
>>>people.  What I'm wanting to do is set up a rescue disc for a really
>>>old laptop.  It needs to boot up a linux based CD, hopefully with
>>>minimal to no working stuff on the harddrive (I plan to put a floppy
>>>image to be written to a disk when needed to do the actual booting.)
>>>      
>>>
>> <bigsnip> (SBM is Smart Boot Manager) </bigsnip>
>>
>>
>>AFAICT is a laptop with an add-on CD-ROM drive
>>but no BIOS support to boot from that drive.
>>
>>
>>The most clean solution would be updating the BIOS.
>>Contact the manufactor for detailed information.
>>
>>I have no clue how much they will charge for it.
>>
>>
>>
>>What about booting from floppy?
>>
>>
>>GSt
>>
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>>    
>>
>Upgrade the BIOS?  Are you kidding me?  We're not talking a simple
>flash here, you'd have to REPLACE the BIOS.  This is a ~1995 system,
>not a 2000+ one...  It just simply lacks the capability and if it can
>get it via a flash, I realy seriously doubt they ever would have made
>one for such a system anyway, and they sure as heck aren't going to
>for one little ordinary user rather than some business running
>thousands of the things or something.  Seriously though, I really
>doubt Toshiba supports a laptop they made a decade ago.  Last I
>checked they showed no sign of this anyway that I've been able to
>find.  I can't blame them, I wouldn't expect anyone to.  If someone
>asked me to support something I did for them ten years ago, I'd just
>laugh at them.  It's not a question of money because I'm not BIll
>Gates, so I don't have enough money to make it feasible for them to
>try to rig up some kind of bios upgrade for me.
>
>Now, floppy booting works.  That's what I was saying earlier.  I had
>hoped I could figure out how to get SBM to boot the CD-ROM and I
>planned to use it via floppy.  My intention is to, once I get
>something that works, include a disk image on the restore CD so that
>it can be written to floppy.  My intention is to not rely on a floppy
>disk to last as long as a CDR for the person I'm selling this system
>to later.  (Floppies have the annoying tendency to die in a matter of
>weeks in some bad cases, years in the best cases.  Whereas CDRs, if
>you take care of them, theoretically promise up to 10 years. 
>Theoretically...)
>
>Right now the only solution I've found is directly booting.  Thing is,
>the kernel+initrd for anything I wish to boot MUST fit on the floppy,
>and I have to implement such a solution on a case by case basis, and
>there were one or two bootable CDs that I thought might benefit that
>person, not just the restoration disc I'm planning to rig up.
>
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>
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>  
>





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