How to create bootable floppy to boot flash drive bios won't see

notchris

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I have tried super grub disks and all sorts of different, boot loaders, batch files etc,

I want to boot from a floppy and/or cd to load drivers for a USB 1.0 or 2.0 port and boot from the flash drive i have that has knoppix on it or a windows installation or what ever else I want to boot off usb

can anyone help me I am relatively new to linux and have been researching for quite some time not sure what i am doing wrong but if someone could point me to a step by step to make this happen it would greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris
 

notchris

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My point behind this post is not having usb support in bios
I want to in theory load a boot loader that installs usb support then I can boot from the usb drive
I want to be able to load this boot loader with a floppy and a cd
I messed with batch files and attempted to use forms of dos but no luck so far
I hear about Super Grub Disk and different options but i am still new to linux
so I tried somethings just not sure if I did it right

Dell Latitude C600 Pheonix Bios
850 MHz Intel PIII
256MB Ram
boot Knoppix from USB via CD Loader
Gateway Solo2150
450 MHz Celeron PII
160MB Ram
boot SLiTAz from USB via Floppy Loader
both have 1.0 usb ports
I'd like to find a solution and post .img and .iso files as free tools available for anyone else

most of the rom drives in them won't read newer burned mediums and the Harddrives are junk but i got boxs of 1gb and 2gb flash drives from working for a company that gave them away to their employees as ad space I could give these away around my local community for those less fortunate then the rest of us
That's how I got started I was enthusiastic about it someone noticed and gave me my first box to play and learn

There it is my info my cause my purpose
Thanks again in advance for anything you can help with
it's greatly appreciated
 

linux_0

Splendid
USB 1.1 is really slow, you'll have trouble booting a full Live CD distro from a 1-2GB usb flash drive.

The other problem's got to do with RAM, you'll need at least 256MB to get XFCE running at an acceptable level, 160MB of RAM isn't going to be enough to run any modern distros with ok performance.

If the dell's got pxe support you might be able to network boot it.

http://boot.kernel.org/

If you can find usb 2.0 PCI cards for these and more RAM you'll get much better results.

Good luck :)
 

notchris

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like i said I am not sure what i am missing quite new to linux i'm more of a dos guy I've been reading a lot of articles and I am hoping you can point me in the right direction for what I want to learn and figure out to do

I basically want to load a kernel and have a command line to find mount and boot a usb device I'm looking for a basic example to build and learn off of
 

dicedaniels

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http://download843.mediafire.com/7d575mzxorag/ic3bckhubqj41og/MS-DOS+USB+Boot+Disk.zipi found something that will work with a usb cd drive. im sure with a little bit of tweeking you can get it to recognize a usb flash drive. i am attempting the same thing. hell even with the same linux system. its a pain. ive used this to install windows on a few laptops that only had floppy drives with an external usb cd drive. works pretty slick.

http://download843.mediafire.com/7d575mzxorag/ic3bckhubqj41og/MS-DOS+USB+Boot+Disk.zip
 
Hmmm... This takes me back to my days testing Windows 95 on systems with non bootable CD-Rom drives.

I'm wondering if there is a slightly different way to look at the problem. In linux you can do something called chroot, essentially you move from your existing loaded environment to another one. Gentoo uses this as part of the installation process, you boot a basic config, compile the system you want and then switch to it. I wonder if you could boot a really basic linux from floppy and then chroot to the one on the USB device.

Any of the resident geeks have any thoughts on this? It's a little outside my knowledge on how to implement it but I think it would work.
 

bmouring

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So long as the proper toolset exists on the floppy distro (chiefly chroot) and the kernel booted is sufficiently compatible with the C runtime on the usb distro (may be a bit of an issue, as I recall Injector Linux uses a 2.4 kernel), I see no reason it shouldn't work

Also, I would kinda be surprised if the OP is still interested in this based on how old the topic is
 
He probably took one look at your fantasies of him building you your AFG™ LXDE super distro and ran for the hills... that or Distro Watch is about to get a new entry.

By the way, in keeping with this weeks announcements you really should start posting 11% less to be in keeping with your fanatical roots and show your solidarity with the workers.

[/Troll Face]
 

bmouring

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Yeah, I saw that and got giddy that it was a top post, then I saw the date and was let down.

I would not wish that on my worst enemy. Hitler, perhaps.
 
Trust me, I've had to do worse than that for a living. Two years of explaining to merchant bankers that we do not randomly change passwords just for fun and that perhaps they actually attained a near human state and just forgot it. It even got to the point where I could predict within an hour when some of them would call each month :(
 
People ask what sort of primate I am, now you know I was a password reset monkey :)

We went from supporting clients using our software to end users of the clients when our company launched a hosted solution that employees of our clients could access via a web browser. As such I ended up having to remote onto end user home PC's far to frequently. Non technical professionals are one thing, they know not to abuse you and that we actually provided a very good service. Home users forced to use a system they never wanted was a completely different game. It's not my fault you're running Windows ME / Have crap broadband / Got a virus...

I did however have wonderful fun with a guy in the states that ran Ubuntu. Strictly speaking we were a Windows only shop, he knew this and was stunned when I not only knew what he was talking about but got him running in under 5 minutes. He knows I did him a favour and that he'll never get it from anybody else if he called again.