Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 09, 2006 03:17 AM
Correct, lack of BIOS support for booting USB is a problem. That's why I asked GRML to add "chainboot" capability. (The article links to GRML's consent.) Chainboot will appear in a future version. When is impossible to say, but I hope with GRML 0.7.
Chainboot works like this: it begins booting from CD-ROM, under normal BIOS control, but then loads USB drivers and "pivots" to the USB device, finishing bootup from there. Once booted, there's no more need for the CD, and you can eject it. The end result is the same as booting directly from USB.
Of course, the user must carry a CD along with the USB drive. Presumably it would be the GRML live CD.
However the chainboot problem is general. Such a CD could help any OS boot from USB on these "legacy" PCs. So maybe the idea will attract wider interest. The CD can be a small, business-card CD, since it does very little. Perhaps someone will launch a Sourceforge project.
Such tricks are not unknown. Many older projects exist for chainboot from floppy to CD-ROM. Old BIOS firmware once booted exclusively floppy or IDE hard drives, not CD-ROM. The situation then was similar. Today, 90% of PCs can boot CD-ROM. The problem is no longer chainboot from floppy to CD-ROM, but chainboot from CD-ROM to USB.
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Re:Hardware detection? Not so rare...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 09, 2006 03:17 AMChainboot works like this: it begins booting from CD-ROM, under normal BIOS control, but then loads USB drivers and "pivots" to the USB device, finishing bootup from there. Once booted, there's no more need for the CD, and you can eject it. The end result is the same as booting directly from USB.
Of course, the user must carry a CD along with the USB drive. Presumably it would be the GRML live CD.
However the chainboot problem is general. Such a CD could help any OS boot from USB on these "legacy" PCs. So maybe the idea will attract wider interest. The CD can be a small, business-card CD, since it does very little. Perhaps someone will launch a Sourceforge project.
Such tricks are not unknown. Many older projects exist for chainboot from floppy to CD-ROM. Old BIOS firmware once booted exclusively floppy or IDE hard drives, not CD-ROM. The situation then was similar. Today, 90% of PCs can boot CD-ROM. The problem is no longer chainboot from floppy to CD-ROM, but chainboot from CD-ROM to USB.
Mark
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