Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Ron Clarke wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:29:00 +0000 (UTC)
> sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
>
> > Are there computers which will boot directly from USB memory stick in
> > cases where the manufacturer was so cheap that there is no floppy drive?

>    I have a machine that has the option to boot from a USB drive as the 
> first option. As I don't have a USB stick, I haven't tried it.

To boot DOS from USB stick on a computer with no floppy drive, would we 
just sys that drive?  It is FAT16 already.


> But: it also has a floppy drive, hard disks and CD/DVD to boot from, so I 
> don't actually have the need.
>
> Regards,
>         Ron

Sindi

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org


We just confirmed that an HP with onboard i810 video/sound chip also will 
not boot BL3 loop if you boot DOS with himem.sys (plain 2.2.16 and 2.2.26 
and also P1 2.2.26 and 2.4.31 kernels).

Without himem.sys, the P1 2.4.31 and the P1 2.2.26 kernel boot and the 
non-P1 2.2.26 kernel gets as far as 'invalid compressed format' and we 
can't reboot without the power switch.  Same as the IBM with that chip.

The above holds for USB memory stick or hard drive boot.  I assume BL3 
loop will have the same problems as on the IBM with i810 chip.

Avoid non-pentium (generic BL) kernels on these computers (I don't think 
any 486s used system RAM for video anyway), and specify RAM minus 1M 
(mem=127M if you have 128MB) or use a 2.4 kernel because 2.2 does not 
detect the fact that 1MB of onboard RAM is being wasted, and use lilo or 
bypass config.sys with F5 and avoid Win98 which won't boot without 
himem.sys.  If you use lilo and 2.4.31 all these problems should go away. 
(Except for the poor quality video and sound - use PCI cards instead).

Ext2 linux still has the memory detection problem with 2.2 kernels but 
boots with himem.sys unlike ramdisk or loop BL.  We are now using lilo 
boot floppy disks, with a menu, or you can choose between disks for BL3 or 
BL2 boot, at various framebuffer resolutions.

Xvesa may also be affected by himem.sys on these computers, or maybe it is 
the PCI ATI video cards we put in.

A generic (SiS) computer with i810 chip for onboard sound (SiS 7012 Audio 
Device) but not onboard video boots BL2 ramdisk with himem.sys, loadlin, 
and non-pentium 2.2.16 kernel.  So do all our computers without onboard 
sound or video.  How do I identify the onboard ethernet if it is newer 
than the SW71 'net' kernel?

I would not purchase a computer with onboard i810 video.  It also only 
gives you 1MB video RAM in DOS (and probably with svgalib).  Someone said 
X for i810 can be made to work with more video and there is an i810fb 
driver (it is not vesafb).  i810 sound only works at 48KHz sampling 
rate which disables most sound programs and requires that mplayer convert 
44K or 22K to 48K.  But these are both 800MHz computers given to us free 
and compile kernels four times faster than 200MHz.

Sindi