[syslinux] USB-FDD

[Adam Wysocki via ArcaBit]

18.01.06 nazosan at gmail.com wrote:

> Yikes.  Well, I suppose you might try giving it the same partitioning
> and formatting as a floppy disk (I suppose 2.88MB would do.)

The disk must have a partition table - it have to be seen by Windows as 
a normal USB drive.

> 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.

Seems that USB-FDD has a standard 1.44 MB geometry (C/H/S 80/2/18). 2.88 
ones have 36 sectors per track (80/2/36).

> I suppose you could always try and see, just be careful, and make 
> a backup first.

As always :) I've already backed up an MBR.

> 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.

It's not a problem, I've got a 64 MB disk for testing.

> 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.

I'll try it tomorrow (I don't have access to PC with USB now) and will let 
you know if the BIOS booted my image.

> If the drive isn't treated correctly by linux, you may not be able to 
> write a new image back to the drive

Sounds frightfully - well, if that happens, I'll try to solve this :)

Thanks,

-- 
[ Adam Wysocki :: www.gophi.rotfl.pl :: +48889004440 ]
[ Software Development Department, ArcaBit Sp. z o.o ]
[ Ul. Fortuny 9 :: 01-339 Warszawa :: www.arcabit.pl ]