Thinkpads Forum

I am interested in booting my newly acquired X61 tablet from an SD card. I can see the card (I've put a Linux OS on it) when booting from the hard drive, But can't get the BIOS to boot from the card. I have not updated the BIOS: it is 1.20 (7SET34WW), 7/29/2008. Thoughts on this? Would Middleton BIOS allow booting from the SD card? Thanks in advance.

No it won't.

The only bootable SD card readers I know are USB-based, making use of the BIOS's USB boot routines

BIOS won't see the SD as a bootable device, and neither will Windows. Linux could probably boot it but it first has to boot from a BIOS-accepted bootable device, HDD or USB.

The X201 Tablet will boot from an SD card. It is the only Thinkpad I know of that will. It sees the SD card in the BIOS as a USB drive. On mine, I have Linux Mint 17.2 on a 64gb SDXC card. I've partitioned it with 32gb as a fat 32 partition and a 24gb system and 8gb swap partition. If the fat 32 partition is done first, Windows will see it as a smaller fat 32 card while Linux can see the whole card. It is a bit faster than a USB 2.0 drive but still not all that fast.

The W700 will boot from a CF card but not the W701. Neither will boot from an SD card.

Perfect. Thanks for the spot on answer and explanations. This is a new machine for me. Still trying to figure it out.

If you're really into hacking, the Plop bootloader can be installed as a PCI option ROM. That should let you load a Linux kernel from wherever, probably including an SD card.

R