[Coco] Re: Bootable PCI USB Card? (On-Topic, really!)

[farna at att.net]

Roger, why not just transfer the USB key content to a CD-ROM then boot from that? You'd still have most of your utility, just can't change data on the CD. That's where the USB key gets paired with the CD-ROM. ;>  Unless your laptop has a CD-RW drive -- then you can burn a CD-RW disk... 

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Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Independent 
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 -------------- Original message ----------------------
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 11:46:58 -0400
> From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch-coco at 30below.com>
> Subject: [Coco] Bootable PCI USB Card? (On-Topic, really!)
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20060608110515.01c03ba8 at mail.30below.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> 
> OK, this is ontopic. Really, it is!
> 
> There are a few things that I'm having "issues" with in Win2K and MESS, so 
> I thought "Instead of diddling with floppies & partitions & whatnot, why 
> not set up a bootable USB Key with a dos-only Win98?" so I can run dos apps 
> to tranfer disks & whatnot (and the JV emulator, which I bought many years 
> ago). So I did. I found enough webpages that got me working, and now my 2G 
> Sandisk Cruzer Micro is FAT32 formatted, and will boot from (so far, 3 
> machines tested) most any machine that can boot from a USB key.
> 
> Unforch, the 2 machines I wanted to boot this critter from most, *won't* 
> boot from a USB key. :-((
> 
> My lappytop I've pretty much given up hope for - they don't publish BIOS 
> upgrades for it - it's a support issue for them & you have to ship it back 
> to them to update the BIOS. I'd have to boot from CD or floppy with a 
> kernel that knows how to boot the rest of the way from USB, which rather 
> defeats the point; but the internal floppy on the critter is actually USB, 
> so that kinda limited the utility of having a Win98/DOS booter anyway, so 
> not that big of a loss. Tack on no on-board serial or parallel, and that 
> clinches the fact it's pretty much a Winders/Linux box. No biggie, really.
> 
> My main desktop machine[1] at home, however, was my main hope, but it 
> doesn't support booting from USB either. It, however, has PCI slots (Lots 
> of 'em!) and I could add (another) USB card to it if necessary, *if* that 
> USB card had a BIOS that told the box how to boot from a USB key plugged 
> into it.
> 
> Does anyone know if such a critter (USB PCI card with it's own bootable 
> BIOS) actually exist?
> 
> Yes, a lot of wasted electrons for what some might see as a simple point, 
> but better too much info than not enough... ;-)
> 
> Thanks!
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger