USB booting :: machine spec

Quick question: When did BIOS' and motherboards start supporting bootable USB devices? I dont know... I have 2 computers that I'd like to play with bootable USB pendrives on, but they're only AMD1200+ CPUs on VIA K7SEM boards. What should I look for in the BIOS?

Also would my laptop (Compaq pentium 2 300mhz) support booting from a USB device do you think?

I'm an experienced linux guy but this is just a way out of my experience...

Thanks for the help!

I would guess that the laptop doesn't support usb booting. Don't know about the others, but there should be something about boot order in the bios setup.

Our old Compaq Evo N110 (PIII-933, I think) doesn't support USB booting, but then again, neither does our Samsung laptop from last year - in fact, I've never found a laptop which will boot from a USB drive

Have I just been unlucky?

BIOS's which support usb booting usually have boot options something like;

"USB HDD"
"USB zip"

On some bioses, the USB device will only show up if you had the usb device plugged in at boot, then it will showup in the hard disk field as one of the hard disks.

original here.