USB booting :: Bootable CF card

If you have a USB pen drive, then here is how I have done it.
Plug the USB pendrive into the first PC and boot up using the live CD. Use the USB HDD install option to make a DSL bootable USB Pendrive. Put your CF card into the second computer in the IDE CF slot and the USB pendrive in an USB plug. Boot the second computer and set the BIOS to boot first from a USB Hard Drive. At the boot prompt type [B]dsl norestore base noapm noapci . Go through the boot setup process and when you get to the desktop, open a terminal as root. Type cfdisk. Delete whatever partition is on hda1 (which will be your CF disk if you have no other hard drive and the CF disk is set to IDE0 as primary master. If you have another hard drive, then you need to figure out what device your CF card is set to - hda2, hdb1, etc.) Make a new Linux type 83 partition on the CF disk. Write the partition table. Right click on the desktop and choose Apps->tools->installs->Frugal Grub Install and go through the process allowing for a new install of DSL on your CF disk. When you are finished, then reboot and set your computer to boot first from the hard drive 0. Remove the USB pendrive and see the computer boot from the CF drive.

original here.