Cannot boot up from USB stick on T23

[kylerickards]

Hi all

I am trying to get the T23 to boot from USB stick but even though the 1.18 bios is installed and the correct options set within it, nothing ever seems to load up.

I have tried various linux distros including Mint, Puppy and Ubuntu. Do I need the memory stick formatted in a certain way? I have tried various options on Puppy including Superfloppy etc and different file systems but still no joy.

Thanks in advance

Kyle

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.
The T23 is not made for booting from USB, however some people have (sort of) managed it on a similar T30.
see this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... t+from+usb
I don't give you much hope though....

[rkawakami]

Here's the trick (I just re-confirmed this operation):

- have a USB key which is known to support booting; I use GE Intelligent Stick 128MB (HO98203)
- find a copy of Hewlett Packard's USB Disk Storage Format Tool V2.1.8
- have a bootable floppy connected to the system
- run the HP USB tool and
-- a) choose "Create a DOS startup disk"
-- b) select "using DOS system files at"
-- c) and enter the path, "a:\" in the box

When the formatting of the USB drive is completed, the system files from the floppy will have been copied to it. Insert the USB drive in the T23's port, boot the system, access BIOS and check the Startup/Boot menu. I'm assuming that you will be keeping the regular hard drive connected to the system. If not, then disregard the following: You will have to move the USB drive before the existing hard disk drive. To do that, use the arrow keys to select the "+Hard Drive" line in the Boot menu and then press the Enter key. That should expand the line with a list of the drives that BIOS has detected. If the USB drive is not first in the list, then using the arrow key, select the USB drive and press the F6 key. That will move the drive up in the boot list. Press the F10 key and save the settings.

@RBS: Never lose hope .

edit: Note: The HP format tool will only recognize MSDOS system files (MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS) from the floppy. If you have a DRDOS or PCDOS (like the IBM PC Doctor floppies), then you will not be able to format the USB drive.

[kylerickards]

Many thanks rkawakami.

If I do the above do you think I will be able to install Puppy or DSL onto it to boot from?

Kyle

[rkawakami]

Not sure about that. The HP USB tool, in addition to the formatting utility that came with the GE USB drive, only appears to support the regular Microsoft MSDOS system filenames. I tried using one of the IBM PC Doctor diskettes as the bootable system disk and it didn't work. Those PC Doctor floppies use IBM DOS (PCDOS) files. Assuming that you can copy over a standard MSDOS system onto the flash drive, then I would think that you should be able to install the Linux files as well.

[m88k]

Sorry to wake up an old thread, but the T23 CAN boot from usb. They're considered hard drives by the bios, so if you go into the boot order menu, and expand the harddrive selection, you can put the usb drive ahead of the internal hard drive. I can't seem to find a key that will expand the hard drive list in the f12 boot menu....

[eyestrain]

True! I didn't know there was supposed to be any trouble booting from usb, and had done it with no problems from my T23's!

It is slow though, with usb 1.1 or 1.0, or whatever version it is.

I also tend to not have a magnetic hard drive inside my computers, don't know if that makes it easier. I also tend to change my bios as soon as I get a new computer, and change the boot order to put external cd's first, then internal cds, then external usb drives, then internal hard drives. My personal preference, but it also hasn't led to problems and works with USB boot. I don't recall if I need to hit F12 on each usb boot if there's a hard drive inside the computer.

M88k, Not sure about the key to expand, maybe arrow keys, or maybe it automatically would be expanded if it saw anything? Can't recall. Welcome to the forum, by the way.

I mostly boot from my flash drives from inside the ultrabay, especially with the usb 1.x T23. If you want more info on that, just ask.

[m88k]

Actually I just came into a small pile of hard drive free t23s. I was looking into using CF cards as internal replacements, but the cost of several, especially for my purposes, seemed a bit prohibitive. (Especially with how often people report nuking flash drives even without swap)

Wonderful alternative solution: I have 50 some PCMCIA industrial flash cards on their way from an ebay auction. Dirt cheap, and I think I might even recoup the cost by selling some individually on ebay...

I'll report back on how they work out. I'm just planning on booting some of the mini-linux distros. Puppy, Slitaz, TinyME, AntiX, and DSL are all on the menu so far. We'll see how well it works out. If it doesn't, it was a cheap experiment and I'll see about getting CFs again.

My experience with the usb boot is a bit screwy, but I'll give a more detailed description once I work out the rules. USB 1.0 is really, really rare, and I don't think it supports storage drives. 1.1 was the early patch revision, and it's what any usb 1 computer I've encountered has had.

[eyestrain]

Well I've got two T23's running Linux from CF or SD, in the ultrabay, so if you have trouble with the CF, post about it, and PM me if I don't see it.

I also ran from the regular hard drive bay, but I prefer ultrabay in general, where can easily switch boots. With the T23's I never did an install, just did live usb right off the "hard drive". I used another computer to run usb-creator to make the live-usb onto the CF or SD, or even SD "Plus USB" or whatever Sandisk calls it, which can be used as SD or USB, and then my Live flash of Mint, Ubuntu, or Xubuntu can be placed in an adapter in an ultrabay in a Thinkpad, or in a bootable expresscard-SD adapter in my T60, or probably (haven't tested yet) into the 600's PCMCIA slot via a simple PCMCIA-CF adapter.

Have plans to use Remastersys or such, to make live flash that include all the latest security updates and bugfixes. And boot from them also, in the ultrabay as though they are hard drives, like I do now. All my data is on a NAS. Just want to point bookmarks to the NAS in the Remastered Live linux.

This kind of solution would allow *no* writing at all to the flash drives, other than when making an update for security/bugfixes. I'm not worried about longevity, but performance. Though to tell the truth, with a T60p, I'm using CF and Win XP with a few tweaks, and performance is usually fine.

[m88k]

Well, I didn't do my research properly; it looks like the 600 was the last Thinkpad with pcmcia boot support. So now I have 50 PCMCIA flashcards, about 15 of which I've already flashed with various small OSes... Looks like I just became an ebay PC Card dealer.

I'm switching over to the CF+ide adapter plan, though I'll be using the internal harddrive bays, as I have no ultrabay2000 adapters, and I'd like to keep the optical drives onboard.

You're loading MONSTER operating systems on the poor babies. Next month I'll be installing Arch on at least one, possibly all three. A quick test of Arch in VirtualBox suggests it'll run smoothly and several times faster than Puppy, nevermind Ubuntu. I will be continuing to report back, and any help when I run into problems will be greatly appreciated, but I think you have the wrong OS for anything but wanting everything!

I definitely agree with the usb-creator method, though I have another trick. I'll be setting up Arch manually on one T23, and then I'll use dd to make a backup image. I'll just flash the image to each CF card, and they're ready to go, completely customized to my liking!

Have you noticed a difference between CF to IDE and SD to IDE? I heard SD is typically a lot slower as a hard drive, as the cf card's parallel interface plays nicely with standard IDE controllers, while the SD adapter typically has a bottleneck in the chip that translates the serial interface into PATA...

[billp117]

CF to IDE works best. I hardly noticed a difference between a slow IDE HD to the CF to IDE.

[eyestrain]

, though I'll be using the internal harddrive bays, as I have no ultrabay2000 adapters, and I'd like to keep the optical drives onboard.

If you want one to make testing easier it's only $7.50 shipped, but can take a while to ship from Asia.

You're loading MONSTER operating systems on the poor babies.

Yes, though I tried puppy, I think was on a T23, and didn't notice web speed improvement. Puppy also has security issues I've read. Xubuntu might be an ok choice? It didn't run well on a T22 I had experience with for a week or so, but maybe better on a T23.

Ubuntu and Mint I'm just used to. With my 728meg, not sure if they are noticably slower than smaller OS's on a T23? A smaller os would save money by allowing less memory. I just don't have experience with many Linux distributions, including Arch.

I'll be setting up Arch manually on one T23, and then I'll use dd to make a backup image. I'll just flash the image to each CF card, and they're ready to go, completely customized to my liking!

Sounds good. I like the idea of live linux because of avoiding writes to the flash, to improve performance. If you setup your manual install to minimize random writes, you should be fine. DD for an exact replica also seems good to me. I tried acronis, but it didn't like the idea of writing to flash as a hard drive. DD should work better, I'd expect.

Have you noticed a difference between CF to IDE and SD to IDE? I heard SD is typically a lot slower as a hard drive, as the cf card's parallel interface plays nicely with standard IDE controllers, while the SD adapter typically has a bottleneck in the chip that translates the serial interface into PATA...

There are some fast sd cards (though the fastest cf is still faster than the fastest sd), but the only sd-ide adapter card that I have tried is slow, limiting sequential transfers to 9mb/sec. I didn't test access speeds, which is the real benefit of using flash of course. You do gain the benefit of the write protect switch.
Don't know where the bottleneck is, but for example sata/pata conversion can be quite fast and cheap.

I'm moving on from T23, with mixed feelings. Really like the model a lot, especially the size, form and location of jacks, but the screen isn't the best, even with sxga+. Though it is somewhat quiet, there's quieter, and I like my customized R51 so much more, with a far better screen, near silence without undervolting, spectacular keyboard, and maybe twice the cpu speed.

Of course the T23 is "fast enough", about as fast as a netbook I believe. And it is a very charming computer. Not something I could say about the R51.

[JBUK]

I got interested in this thread, so thank you guys for that.
I did not realise that I could boot my T23s into dos from a usb stick. So I set about creating one using the info above.
Needless to say it worked. I then added all the other stuff that is needed for disk and file manipulation under dos - partition magic, drive image, ntfs4dos, testdisk, mbrtool etcetc.
Also I managed to set up USB2 access to external disks under dos too.

One thing though I have been unable to do is to get a U3 smartdrive stick to be bootable. This is despite having uninstalled the u3 partition and fully formatted it to enable it to be used as a normal usb key.

Has anyone had success in doing this ?