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

[Rod Barnhart]

Unfortunately, those only support CF. I'm not aware of any that supports USB
and plugs into an IDE cable.

Rod


On 6/8/06, L. Curtis Boyle <curtisboyle at sasktel.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 09:46:58 -0600, Roger Merchberger
> <zmerch-coco at 30below.com> wrote:
>
> I know that there is a hardware card that plugs into the IDE cable that
> will allow you to boot from USB cards (either The Register or The Inquirer
> websites just had a review of it). You just plug the hardware into the
> cable (like a normal hard drive or CD/DVD), and the stick into the
> hardware. It translates everything on the hardware, so to the computer
> (and BIOS), it just looks like a normal hard drive, so you can boot with
> it even on really old machines that don't have USB, never mind USB boot
> support in the BIOS.
>     An example I found on the web after a quick peek is here:
> http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/adidecf.asp
>     and they are only about $27.00.
>
> > 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
> >
> > [1] Tyan 2462 Mobo w/Dual Athlon MP 2600+ CPUs, 6 or 7 PCI slots (most
> > 64-bit) and can take up to 3.5G RAM. Not bad for a 4-year-old system -
> > but the USB spec for booting & whatnot didn't exist (or wasn't
> > solidifed) back when that sucker was built. It was the very first Athlon
> > MP motherboard commercially made; and at almost $500, was destined for
> > serverdom. I had other plans... ;-)
> >
> > --
> > Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Bugs of a feather flock together."
> > sysadmin, Iceberg Computers |           Russell Nelson
> > zmerch at 30below.com          |
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> L. Curtis Boyle
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>



-- 
Rod Barnhart aka Wintermute (http://www.nitemarecafe.com)

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