USB-FDD

Forum: USB booting
Topic: USB-FDD
started by: TobiasCrefeld

Posted by TobiasCrefeld on Nov. 26 2005,05:36

Does DSL support USB-FDD-booting?
A search on DSLs wiki and forum had no hit.

AFAIK this is similar to USB-HDD but without a partition table on the stick.

Any idea? (sorry, no MS-Win available)

TIA,
Tobias.

Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 26 2005,19:01

You could try to manually build a USB-FDD installation by formatting your entire stick with FAT instead of the traditional method of setting up a partition table and then formatting a partition. Basically, this alternative structure would be something like a "Superfloppy" disk instead of a 1.44MB floppy disk.

You could then manually copy over the files from the DSL livecd. Just make sure that you place the files that are in /boot/isolinux over to your top level directory on your USB stick. Also, rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg

Finally, apply syslinux directly to the device itself instead of a partition. It may be a good idea to use the -s "slow and stupid" flag because USB floppies are much slower than USB flash memory sticks.

syslinux -s /dev/sda

(where sda is supposed to be the device location of your USB device)

Even then, it might not work but it's worth a try. Good luck.

You could also look at your PC or motherboard vendor's download site to see if a newer version of your BIOS has been released that supports USBHDD or USBZIP booting.