Boot from floppy, what then?

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Boot from floppy, what then?
started by: ivan8586@hotmail.com

Posted by ivan8586@hotmail.com on July 17 2005,09:09

Sorry folks, this is my first time ever I do this so I can't figure out an obvious thing.

I have a not-so-new MBO with SiS735 chipset. BIOS allows me to choose USB (HDD|Floppy|Zip) booting, but it doesn't work with my Kingmax 128 MB USB stick. It does boot from the same stick on another computer, so problem is with the MBO/BIOS.

So I have made a bootable floppy as per instructions I found in another thread. It boots up the floppy and I have to type in something in the prompt.

<boot>:

If I only press ENTER it tries to load DSL from Floppy and gives me "boot failure, replace disk..." or something like that.

What should I type?

Posted by ivan8586@hotmail.com on July 17 2005,10:11

I tried

> dsl fromhd /dev/sda1

but it didn't work. Any other command I should try?

Posted by ke4nt1 on July 17 2005,17:24

There are 2 different floppy images.

bootfloppy.img
and
bootfloppy_usb.img

grab the usb version ..

There are some bios changes you could check.
Legacy USB enable
USB keyboard enable
Make sure USB is turned on.

Let us know..

73
ke4nt

Posted by ivan8586@hotmail.com on July 17 2005,18:32

Thanks for replying ke4nt1.

I got bootfloppy-usb.img and made a bootable floppy with that.

But I am at a loss as to what should happen when I boot?

1. I set BIOS to boot from floppy - OK

It boots from floppy and I get a prompt. What now? Should it load from USB automatically when I press ENTER? Or am I supposed to tell it to? How?

I'm new to linux alltogether, that's why all the questions.

Posted by cbagger01 on July 17 2005,22:03

Try doing a USBHDD install to your pendrive.

Then download the usb boot floppy and use rawrite32 to make a boot disk.

It should automatically find your pendrive without any special commands. Just press ENTER.

If it doesn't work, try a fresh floppy disk.

Finally, if you get a "boot failed" message instead of the usual "dropping you to a limited shell" message, it means that your computer is incompatible with the version of SYSLINUX that is used on the floppy disk.

It is possible to get an older or newer version of SYSLINUX for MSWindows or for linux and then run the syslinux command on your floppy disk to change the version on your floppy.

Finally, you can always use a DSL livecd to boot up your usb pendrive.

Just make sure to type:

dsl frugal fromhd=/dev/sda1

and then press enter.

Posted by ivan8586@hotmail.com on July 18 2005,11:42

I did USBHDD install and booted from live CD. It works!

Thanks for your help!

Now, off to fix the Biggest Problem Of Them All -> the refresh rate.

This is going to be a long day, I can tell