USB booting :: following recent article doesn't work



hello everyone I'm new to this whole linux thing so please bear with me.
I have a 512 PNY attache` usb drive.
My motherboard is a VIA VT8235 that boots USB-ZIP completely fine ( :D ).
I followed this guide for the most part: closer look at damn small linux
When I originally booted into DSL by the liveCD, everything went fine.
I prceeded to install by USB-HDD ( which by alot of trial and error, I found didn't work with my motherboard >:( ).
Then I installed by USB-ZIP which works perfectly.
However, I can't save to sda2, because it doesn't exist.
I went ahead and used cfdisk to make my own partion table as follows:
sda1----boot----primary---FAT16--55mb
sda2----(....)----primary---FAT16--~450mb

Or something along those lines.
This to a certain extent solves things. But I just want to know if I did something wrong or if this configuration will brick my drive/wear it out. Or if there was an easier way to accomplish this without all this tweaking and stuff.

Is there any way to make sda2 accessable by windows? I was planning to use the extra space ~420mb for my personnal files or files I can use under DSL on another machine.

As a side note: I created the two directories suggested by the article above: /mydsl, /myfiles, /mydsl/optional.
The theme I have (amber is awesome :D ) under /mydsl loads with no problem.
However, the programs I downloaded from 'myDSL' (on the desktop) I put under /mydsl/optional.
When I originally downloaded them they ran fine and extracted and whatnot.
But when I restarted and navigated to /mydsl/optional to try them again they don't run.
How do you install these programs? (I don't want to install them everytime, that's why I tried to put them under /optional )

Thanks in advanced for any help and thanks for making such a great distro.
afaik, fat16 is readable by windows.. but perhaps winxp removed support for it (what version are you using?).  The standard for usb drives is vfat/fat32 I should think.

I'm not sure if it was /mydsl/optional that allowed it, but /OPTIONAL should work.  In your menu they should be listed and you can click on any one of them to install em.

However, to manually install them, use emelFM and the mydsl button, or in terminal use 'mydsl-load'.
I'm running winXP.
But I think the problem is more about XP not liking two partitions on removable storage (maybe?).
I think this because winXP detects the drive nicely but only one partition (that takes up all but 674 KB) is found.
When I load disk management under my computer>manage, it finds two healthy partitions (?)
one is:
(F:) 50mb FAT Healthy (Active)  <-(not FAT16)

the other is:
426mb healthy   <-(no drive letter assigned, no type, rightclick>properties render nothing)

Even though the partition table is actually the one i put in the previous post.
So winXP doesn't/can't write to the drive. :(
So any suggestions?
maybe that's a limitation of fat16, no idea.

I use a hidden fat32, a visible fat32, and a ext2 for mine.
This is a problem with Windows. It only looks at the first partition on a USB drive, which is fine if you have a USB-HDD install, but is no help with the USB-ZIP install as you only see the sda1 partition containing the operating system.

I've never found a solution for it. The only real solution is don't use USB-ZIP - but my VIA EPIA 5000 doesn't support USB-HDD booting, so I have exactly the same problem.

Blame the awful Award BIOS in the VIA motherboards & hope one day there is an upgrade for it that supports USB-HDD booting. And while they're about it, support for isolinux booting from CD also!
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