[ltp] Thinkpads can not boot from flash drive?

[Joel Ebel]

cd-roms are quite different.  I'm just talking about read-write disks. 
The CD-ROM device requires some special functionality to be bootable. 
Alot of drives, especially old ones lack this.  If you put an old 4x 
cd-rom in a new computer it will most likely not boot.  But even the 
oldest floppy drive or IDE hard drive will still boot because it's a 
normal block device and the BIOS handles the rest.  As long as the BIOS 
and the drive support a minimal set of commands defined in 
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/usb_msc_boot_1.0.pdf  the 
usb device can be booted if set up properly.

Joel

Ken Firestone wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Joel Ebel wrote:
> 
>    Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:
> 
>    > I can boot my X31 from my 256MB Memory Corp USB flash device - but it
>    > fails to boot from the no-name 16M flash device I have, since that
>    > device does not support the boot protocol.
> 
>    Boot protocol?  Every USB-Storage device can be made bootable if the
>    BIOS supports booting.  That's like saying some hard drives don't
>    support booting.  It's just a storage device.  With a proper master boot
>    record, and a bootable partition with syslinux installed, any
>    usb-storage device can be booted on a computer that supports it.
> 
> This is not completely true. I have a usb cdrw drive that will NOT
> boot with my X31, no matter what I do. Using the very same bootable
> cds in a different, newer drive, it boots just fine.
> 
> ============================================================================
> Ken Firestone, W3CAT     | For every problem there is one solution
> kenf@speakeasy.net	 |  which is simple, neat, and wrong.
> ken@firestone.net        |   -- H. L. Mencken
> ============================================================================