[syslinux] USB-FDD

[Nazo]

On 1/18/06, Adam Wysocki via ArcaBit <gophi at arcabit.pl> wrote:
> 18.01.06 nazosan at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Why are you trying to do that?
>
> I have couple machines that can boot only from USB-FDDs.
>
> > I don't think it will work if USB-FDD is supposed to mean the
> > standard 1.44MB 2x drives that plug into usb.
>
> Are these drives compatible with USB flash disks? Even if it would
> provide only 2x1.44MB of storage, it would be sufficient for a kernel
> and initrd.
>
> > Are you perhaps having problems with the drive not working in all
> > systems (especially since some dumb bios manufacturers don't even
> > bother to add usb-hdd support.)
>
> Well... It would be nice if my flashdisk could boot on these systems :)
>
> > If so, you might want to look at using USB-ZIP instead.
>
> These BIOSes don't boot anything except USB-FDD :( Even USB-ZIP drives.
>
> Greetings,
>
> --
> [ Adam Wysocki :: www.gophi.rotfl.pl :: +48889004440 ]
> [ Software Development Department, ArcaBit Sp. z o.o ]
> [ Ul. Fortuny 9 :: 01-339 Warszawa :: www.arcabit.pl ]
>
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>
Yikes.  Well, I suppose you might try giving it the same partitioning
and formatting as a floppy disk (I suppose 2.88MB would do.)  I don't
know off the top of my head what the exact numbers a disk uses are,
but, it shouldn't be hard to find online.  I suppose you could always
try and see, just be careful, and make a backup first.  If you have a
cheap old drive, try it first because maybe if things go wrong it'd be
hard to get it back to normal.  I'm thinking maybe if you get a floppy
image and write it directly to the flash drive via dd (eg dd
if=~/disk.img of=/dev/sda kind of thing) that's about as good as
you're going to get.  Bear in mind that if you do this,you loose all
extra space on the drive (eg it goes from being, say a 32MB drive to
being 2.88MB at best, 1.44 if you can't find a 2.88 image.)  If the
drive isn't treated correctly by linux, you may not be able to write a
new image back to the drive -- at least, not via normal dd.  That's
what I'm worried about.  If you do decide to do that, I'd like to
emphasise again that you should use an old cheap drive that you don't
hardly need anymore for testing.

Maybe someone who knows more about the situation will come along though.