Can older computers load extensions from a USB drive without BIOS support?

[tclfan]

I don't expect TC to do anything. Newer computers don't have this issue. As time goes on, the older computers will no longer be used. So the issue will resolve itself.
.....
I just thought it would be interesting to get the views of others.

If I can add mu two cents, Maro is very right trying to explain misunderstanding. All older PC's and particularly laptops did not have USB boot function in BIOS. And when such capability became gradually available it was not standardized at all, so diferent manufacturers were implementing in different ways, such as emulating floppy or Zip drive or LS120. This was a growing process to start capability of booting from usb more common, similar to when the capability of booting from CD Rom before then, when BIOS needed to have the capability of booting from CD in El Torito emulation.
Even new computers, although they have the function of booting from usb included in BIOS, some require the usb boot media to emulate zip drrive or hard drive.
Although it is more standardized nowadays, I do not think standardization of implementation is complete yet.

[Lee]

Slightly OT, but...

...I have also used a "cardbus to USB 2.0 ports" card with same results as onboard USB 1.1 port...

Does that work with a USB wifi dongle?  I have Toshiba Magnia running Microcore 2.x and would like to add a pcmcia multi-usb device, but then I can't use the pcmcia wifi card that is currently installed.  Hmmmm....

[tinypoodle]

I don't see why not (and have actually done that).
If you have 2 PCMCIA type II slots, it may actually be possible to fit a wifi card in the bottom slot *if* it is thin enough, and a USB ports card in the top slot.

And it would become on-topic again if this solution would serve you to then connect a USB storage medium to load extensions or backup at boot time from

[Lee]

Wellll.... it would seem a shame not to keep the TCE directory on a usb stick (it'd be really cool to be able to boot from it, but that's out).  Or maybe one of those cute little external 1 or 2 terabyte drives - I could put a whole bunch of partitions on it... oops that was a different thread.   

[Rich]

I know this threads a little old but if anyone's still interested I'm running TC 2.10 on a DEC
Venturis FX2 5166. It was made in 1997, has a 233Mhz Pentium MMX with 256Mb of ram.
It boots off of the CD drive and the apps and backup are stored on the 128Mb stick in the
USB 1.1 port. I added max_loop=256, noswap, noutc, and waitusb=5 to the isolinux.cfg
file on the iso, installed a NIC, slapped in a 320Gb IDE hard drive and turned it into a
SAMBA file server. It's been running flawlessly since March of 2010. All the "Legacy USB
Support" does is let you plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and the bios makes them
look like PS2 devices to the system.

[Lee]

I thought of booting from CD and keeping the tce directory on USB, but in the end I couldn't think of a really great reason not to just put both the bootup files and the tce directory on the hard drive.

Re. legacy USB support -  being able to use a USB keyboard and mouse would be nice because you can unplug them w/o frying anything - I've seen mother boards ruined by having a PS/2 keyboard removed/reinserted while the A/C was plugged in.

[Lee]

By the way, I did get a pcmcia 4-port USB card for the Toshiba Magnia SG-20 and Microcore 2.x doesn't seem to recognize a usb flash drive plugged into it.  I'll upgrade to Microcore 3.x real soon now and see if that helps.

[tinypoodle]

By the way, I did get a pcmcia 4-port USB card for the Toshiba Magnia SG-20 and Microcore 2.x doesn't seem to recognize a usb flash drive plugged into it.  I'll upgrade to Microcore 3.x real soon now and see if that helps.

First question would be if the cardbus controller resp. card are recognized, see:

Code: [Select]

pccardctl --help
Necessary modules have to be loaded.

Have you specified the boot parameter 'laptop'?

BTW, I do not believe that there is an issue with 2.x about, seemed to always work fine here from 2.3 to 2.10

[Lee]

Thanks for the tips TinyPoodle.

I had not tried pccardctrl - I figured there must be such a tool but expected it to start with "pcmcia..."

And I had not tried anything with boot codes yet, but "laptop" would make sense.

I'm in kind of an odd situation here because

A. The Magnia is headless, so trying out a boot code is a little more involved than it otherwise might be and

B: It is also the only working machine I have that has a pcmcia slot.

The good news is, this is  a toy to me so I can take my time about it and yes, I do have one of those handy little usb to pata adapters so I can set up the drive on another system.

I'll almost certainly do the micro core version update while I'm at it just because I can't think of a good reason not to... I'm supposing I'll get to it while 3.4.1 is still current.   

If I can get it to use the TCE directory on a USB stick, I can put whatever cleverness I need into /opt and have it in my backup and on removable media so I can fiddle with it elsewhere w/o pulling the real hard drive.