[syslinux] Issues Booting Hybrid ISO from UFD on Dell PC

[Gene Cumm]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 16:44, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> On 04/15/2010 10:57 AM, mwesten wrote:
>> Hi, I would like to ask if there are any known issues with booting an
>> ISOLINUX hybrid iso image from a USB Flash Drive on older Dell PC's (i.e. P4
>> 2.2GHz).  I've tried several that one should just be able to write to UFD
>> and boot, but they all fail on my hardware.  I get "isolinux.bin missing or
>> corrupt" message on screen. This function would be very convenient for me,
>> so I'd like to find out if there's anything I can do to get it working.
>> Thanks!
>
> A lot of older machines have problem with USB booting in general, and
> with isohybrid in general.  On some machines you can make it work by
> either tweaking the parameters to isohybrid (especially -s 63 -h 255 on
> some systems, -offset 1 on others, and -entry 4 on even some others), or
> by changing the settings in the BIOS; in particular, you may need to
> change between "USB-HDD" and "USB-ZIP".
>
>        -hpa
>

1) What's the exact model?  For example, OptiPlex GX260 or Dimension
4500.  I have been successful in using something like this with a
GX260, a system that could have had the aforementioned CPU, but with
the latest BIOS.

2) What version is the BIOS?  Have you checked if Dell has released an
updated BIOS?  _Most_ of the time this helps although sometimes makes
it worse (GX620 A10 to A11; A11 is no longer advertised on the support
site).  At this point the system will be old enough that the latest
advertised BIOS is probably your best bet anyways.  A09 versus A01 on
the aforementioned GX260 made a world of difference in USB boot
capabilities.

3) Have you tried just creating a FAT filesystem on a UFD and then
installing SYSLINUX (or an EXT2/3 with EXTLINUX) to see that it can
successfully load a boot loader from the UFD?  It's less convenient
but more likely to work.

4) Have you tried this exact UFD in another machine to ensure it boots
with the image that you wrote onto it?

5) Is this image freely available somewhere such that someone else
might be able to try it?  For reference, I tried RIPLinuX-9.3.iso on
Kingston DataTraveler 1GB UFD in the aforementioned GX260.

-- 
-Gene