question about installer options

[dmtc1]

Well, I have been using tinycore for about a month now.  On my upgrade to 4.02 this week I became curious about what the usb-hdd and usb-zip options are in the graphical installer?  I searched but could not find any documents about them.  I used the frugal install option, but was curious what the other 2 did?

Thanks in Advance!

[gerald_clark]

There are two types of USB flash drives.
Zip drive emulators, ahd hard drive emulators.

[Guy]

There are two types of USB flash drives.
Zip drive emulators, and hard drive emulators.

I think you will find Tinycore can be installed on any usb drive with any option.

The zip option was included for those who have a computer with a bios which will not boot using the other methods. There are a few older computers, where this may be the case, probably around 10 to 15 years old.

A zip drive was like a floppy drive, but larger capacity. Some zip floppy disks were 100 mb. Some were 250 mb. Some people used zip drives before cd writers became common. Ordinary floppy disks were 1.44 mb (there were also others).

Very few people will need to use the zip option.

Very few computers will boot from a usb zip drive, but not a regular usb drive. There are some. Zip drives were common before usb drives.

If your computer works with another option, you don't need the zip option.

[Guy]

I suggest, people installing Tinycore for the first time, use the frugal option.

I think some computers will boot Tinycore installed with the frugal option, when the bios is set to the usb hard drive option.

But if you cannot get Tinycore to boot, because you cannot set your bios to boot it, but the bios has a usb hard drive option, try installing Tinycore using the usb-hdd option.

[Guy]

It would be interesting to hear, how many users cannot get it to work using the frugal option, and need to use one of the other options.

[dmtc1]

Nope mine worked fine with the frugal option, just didnt quite understand the other 2.  I suppose, I didnt realize people still used zip drives, those those were obsolete in 1999.  And of course a floppy what is that?  Although at work, I have plenty of manufacturing equipment some with 5.25 and some had 8inch floppy!

[roberts]

If you have an older computer system, your BIOS might not support USB-HDD boot. In this case, it may still be possible to boot Linux from USB if your BIOS does list USB-ZIP as a boot option.