[syslinux] USB-FDD

[Gustavo Guillermo Pérez]

El Miércoles, 18 de Enero de 2006 16:30, Adam Wysocki via ArcaBit escribió:
> Hi,
>
> I'm working on making an USB flash disk bootable and have succeeded in
> booting Linux using syslinux from disk in USB-HDD mode. Is there a way
> to do it in USB-FDD mode, possibly also using syslinux as a bootloader?
My experience:

I was able to boot in USB-FDD mode only my real USB Floppy drive (1.44), and 
my USB-TO-IDE Enclosure for a laptop Hard Drive was only able to boot on 
bioses that support USB-HDD mode. Others USB enclosures that my bios does not 
report as USB-TO-IDE and REPORTS as MASS-STORAGE-DEVICE not allways works 
even the BIOS has support for USB-HDD.

For booting with my Card Reader, I was able to boot in USB-ZIP mode formatting 
the cards with one single partition.
for flash drives, the same procedure using mkbootfat & syslinux, (published on 
this list).

Some flash drives like Kingston Traveller has something wrong in their 
partition tables, the main data are moved forward in the drive about 16, 32 
or 64 sectors of 512 bytes (diferent models), so it does not matter if we 
wipe out the original partition structure and use as a drive with or without 
partition table on whatever system, if you do that on that media you got a 
super compatible flash drive.

Booting my Gentoo Live DVD iso on my USB Hard drive is not always posible, 
cause the BIOSES then I was able to boot the ISO with a small CD-ROM that 
founds later the drive with proper drivers and so on.

Did you find a BIOS upgrade, for your boards?
I was able to boot with pen drives on one mo.bo. jus after making a bios 
upgrade :P

> Thanks in advance.

-- 
Gustavo Guillermo Pérez
Compunauta uLinux
www.compunauta.com