Some people here have reported problems with USB keys. I have found one problem which doesn't boot USB keys formatted as hard disks, and wanted to relate what I've found. First of all, this is a BIOS bug. It's an Award BIOS; I can't get it to show any other version information. Second, even though the "system configuration" screen shows the USB key as a "hard drive", it WILL NOT try to boot it if the boot screen is set to USB-HDD. It will try to boot it if set to USB-ZIP or USB-FDD, but both of those will crash due to geometry mismatch. I have verified that there is no way to query the geometry from the BIOS (just as there isn't for real floppy drives.) The only way to get that to recognize is presumably to format the entire key (no partition table) with the correct geometry expected by the BIOS (which I don't know what it is). I suspect that these aren't the problems that some of you might have seen. Unfortunately, that means I don't have any way of reproducing them. -hpa
H. Peter Anvin wrote:> Some people here have reported problems with USB keys. I have found one > problem which doesn't boot USB keys formatted as hard disks, and wanted > to relate what I've found. > > First of all, this is a BIOS bug. It's an Award BIOS; I can't get it to > show any other version information. >After messing around: it identifies itself as v6.00PG. -hpa
When I did my testing in October it was on a IBM ThinkCentre machine. The BIOS had an option to boot USB hard drives as well as USB removeables - no mention of USB-ZIP. No problems booting grub/syslinux from the hard drive formatted USB key. Memdisk is still an issue though with MS/PC-DOS memdisk images when the USB-KEY is the BIOS (0x80) primary hard drive (I only had an IBM ThinkCentre to test it on). When x86 emulators start supporting USB and booting from USB devices then I can test again (I don't have access to a physical machine anymore that can boot from USB devices). Does anybody know if VMWare supports booting from USB keys? Quinn H. Peter Anvin wrote:> Some people here have reported problems with USB keys. I have found > one problem which doesn't boot USB keys formatted as hard disks, and > wanted to relate what I've found. > > First of all, this is a BIOS bug. It's an Award BIOS; I can't get it > to show any other version information. > > Second, even though the "system configuration" screen shows the USB > key as a "hard drive", it WILL NOT try to boot it if the boot screen > is set to USB-HDD. > > It will try to boot it if set to USB-ZIP or USB-FDD, but both of those > will crash due to geometry mismatch. I have verified that there is no > way to query the geometry from the BIOS (just as there isn't for real > floppy drives.) The only way to get that to recognize is presumably > to format the entire key (no partition table) with the correct > geometry expected by the BIOS (which I don't know what it is). > > I suspect that these aren't the problems that some of you might have > seen. Unfortunately, that means I don't have any way of reproducing > them. > > -hpa > > _______________________________________________ > SYSLINUX mailing list > Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com > Unsubscribe or set options at: > http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux > Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic. > >