Release Candidates :: DSL v3.1 RC4

Hi, total newbie here. I downloaded DSL 3.1-RC4 from the link provided on distrowatch.org, burned it to a CD successfully, booted from the CD (the box has Ubuntu Edgy installed on the SATA drive but it booted fine from the DSL CD)

I then immediately tried to burn a bootable pendrive image using

(right click on desktop)
apps
tools
(selected USB-HDD, which is a named option in my m/b BIOS)

Answered all questions, installed successfully (I think) to sda.

Went to mount tool, mounted sda1, noticed all sorts of new stuff with right now's date and time, so it looked like the install worked.

Except -

When I rebooted, nothing happened. That is, although the pendrive is read-write, with all this good stuff on it under both DSL (booting from CD) and Edgy, the system won't detect it or boot off of it.

I then tried to boot from a diifferent computer (which has Mandriva 2007 installed.) Same results. The pen drive can not be seen as part of the boot cycle, but it works fine once Linux (from the hard drive) is up.

Both of these computers have AMD CPUs and AMI K7S5A Bios.
These bios chips give you a wide range of USB bootable options, and I selected USB HDD. There is also something on a different BIOS page that refers to USB support for DOS, which I enabled. In fact I enabled everything in sight - no luck.

In both cases I am plugging the pen drive directly into the header on the m/b - right below where the on-board Ethernet port is. No hubs involved.

This is a 1GB pendrive.

What can I do to provide more info so I can get this to work?

TIA.

When you made your partion, did you make it bootable?

Quote (quackking @ Nov. 26 2006,18:07)

.....
(selected USB-HDD, which is a named option in my m/b BIOS)

....

When I rebooted, nothing happened. That is, although the pendrive is read-write, ....

I had similar troubles and made the system work by choosing Zip-usb boot option in BIOS and the install to pendrive sequence....or was it floppy-usb? There arent many combinations to try.

Quote (kerry @ Nov. 26 2006,19:33)

When you made your partion, did you make it bootable?

I just selected the apps/tools setup option. I presume that marks the partition bootable, since it creates it. I did not do it myself, though.

Update: I checked this using sfdisk /dev/sda. The only partition on the device is in fact bootable.

Hi. This board seemed to be offline most of yesterday. Any thoughts on my problem? I mean, is this a DSL issue or is it something to do with my motherboards? Is there any way to tell?

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