Bootable CF card

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Bootable CF card
started by: jamesdudy

Posted by jamesdudy on May 21 2006,13:22

I have DSL running on my host pc using DSL iso image. The CF card is attached in a USB slot/adapter on this host system. This host system does not support CF booting.

I want to make DSL bootable on the CF card and transfer it to a mini-itx system, which has an adapter connected to the IDE port, a so called CF ide-adapter card. This BIOS support booting from CF card and does not have HD.

Regards
James

Posted by dtf on May 21 2006,15:00

You might try referring to this discussion. There are others if you do a search in the forum.

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....cf+card >

Basicly the CF card using the adaptor is treated like a hard drive from the view of the BIOS.

Posted by jamesdudy on May 23 2006,14:05

The CF card is attached in a USB slot/adapter on the host system to create a bootable CF.

The bootable CF is transfered to a minitx sytem with BIOS to boot from CF.

Posted by doobit on May 23 2006,14:20

If the CF card is plugged into the USB slot, then it probably is emulating a SCSI device and mounting at sdax (where x is the number of the device, e.g. sda1 ) in which case you should set the BIOS to boot from a USB hard drive, not a CF device.

Posted by jamesdudy on May 23 2006,14:40

The CF card is plugged into the USB slot of the first pc just to create a bootable CF(how to create this bootable CF).

The CF card is to be transfered to the 2nd pc without usb only using CF to boot.

Posted by doobit on May 23 2006,15:01

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.