[syslinux] USB-FDD

A.J. Venter aj at getopenlab.com
Thu Jan 19 09:09:21 PST 2006


On Thursday 19 January 2006 18:57, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> A.J. Venter wrote:
> > While this is true, it's only a partial truth, I know for a fact that
> > many of them DONT keep the partition table in the writable flash, opting
> > instead for a read-only fake partition table, hardwired onto the
> > control-board, that presents only one partition back to the OS.
>
> Could you give any details of these (e.g. vendor)?
I wish :)  there's at least 5 or 6 but I have no idea exactly which ones, and 
I've found some vendors that ship both variations.
What I can tell you is that they tend to be the low-end of the market - e.g. 
the cheapest sticks.

Of course I am in Africa which is notorious as the dumping ground for 
bottom-range hardware that are unconcerned with standards (I have encountered 
motherboards that contained on-board chipset with fake PCI-ID's which then 
ID'd themselves as watchdog cards - so Linux would load the watchdog driver, 
which when the "card" failed to respond would shut the machine down after 30 
seconds !) 
Here at least both variations I describe are highly common and any particular 
stick you buy could be either/or.
You learn a lot when you develop a distro in Africa for Africa, especially 
about adding compatibility with horrible hardware.

Ciao
A.J.
-- 
A.J. Venter
Chief Software Architext
OpenLab International
www.getopenlab.com
www.silentcoder.co.za
+27 82 726 5103




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