[syslinux] USB key: CBIOS line printed, nothing else

[Josh Lehan]

Rory Vieira wrote:
> I came to a similar problem with ONE specific machine.
> I found out that when your bios claims the USB key is a floppy drive
> you NEED to format it with FAT16. When it's a harddrive, I can get
> away with FAT32...

Strange.  The BIOS shouldn't be filesystem-aware at all.  It deals in 
the world of CHS and LBA, to find the bootloader, and that's about it. 
Maybe a BIOS manufacturer did something strange, though....

My BIOS has 2 choices: USB-ZIP and USB-HDD.  Both seem to do the exact 
same thing, for me, reaching the "boot:" prompt in SYSLINUX but not 
finding the SYSLINUX.CFG file (so I can't continue).

I think it's always recognized as a fixed disk, but I'm not sure.

That's another SYSLINUX suggestion for debugging: print the device byte 
received from the BIOS, either 0x00 (diskette) or 0x80 (fixed disk), so 
we can know this.

> I do have to admit that I never saw that CBIOS prompt at all.
> I do however get the message that the kernel "Linux" could not be
> found, when the key is FAT32 and detected as floppy (the bios has no
> other option for me).

That's strange to not get the CBIOS prompt.  Usually, you get one line 
of text containing the string "CBIOS" (or "EBIOS").  Maybe this line 
only appears when the SYSLINUX.CFG file could not be found at all.  Try 
putting in a SAY line in your SYSLINUX.CFG file, to know if it's being 
found or not.  In your case, SYSLINUX may indeed be finding the 
SYSLINUX.CFG file correctly, but then not finding anything beyond that....

> PS: I recreated my own usb key with FAT16, and those problems 
> disappeared...
> Hope this helps...

Interesting.  I'd prefer to not have to use FAT16, since it's grossly 
inefficient, and will totally break down once I scrape the money 
together to buy a USB key larger than 2GB.  (Someday I'd love to put the 
Knoppix *DVD* on a bootable USB key, not just the CD!)

As for your FAT16 partition, what is its type?  Is it 0x06 (FAT16 CHS) 
or 0x0E (FAT16 LBA)?  I'm assuming cluster size was left at the defaults 
for whatever size your partition is?

Josh