Thinkpads Forum

I've got Ubuntu 7.10 on a 2gb USB drive, and I'd like to be able to use it with my 600X. Is there a way to boot from the drive without first loading a driver for it (via bootable floppy or CD)?

Also, would there be a way for me to boot from the drive while it's in my cardbus USB 2.0 card?

I know nothing about this type of boot drive.

But have you tried the boot options in the BIOS?

I know the BIOS has other options besides floppy,CD and HDD...

I've tried changing the BIOS boot order, but it didn't seem to change anything.

The options are: FDD, HDD1, Network, HDD2, HDD3, HDD4, PCMCIA, CDROM.

BTW, I'm able to boot from the thumbdrive with my desktop.

USB doesn't seem to be on that list.

You might be able to put Ubuntu onto a compact flash card though, and boot if from a cheap CF-PCMCIA adapter. But transfer rates with those are slow, maybe similar to old CD-Rom speeds. I think it's under 5 MB/sec. Access times should be good though, so it might still work much faster than from CD.

I've booted older versions of the Ubuntu live CD from my 770E's CD, but newer versions maybe are too bloated--don't work anymore. Puppy Linux and Knoppix newest versions still work for me though.

Another option might be using a CF card in a CF-ATA adapter in the hard drive bay, which can be fast if it works right. But this has been hugely frustrating for me, and many other people who've tried have failed to get acceptable speeds doing this. I've not got this to work fast in my 770E, but under limited circumstances, have in my new T60.

In summary, CD is easiest to try and get to work, CF in PCMCIA I think might work but poor performance and I haven't seen posts on it, and CF in hard drive bay is maybe the most challenging, but potentially the best performance.

James, eyestrain is right. 600X bios does not support booting from USB. You can buy one of these and use it in a CF-PCMCIA adapter. The microdrive is a 4200 RPM drive so it is going to be slow, but yoour 600X can boot from it.

As noted above, the 600X won't boot from USB or a PCMCIA USB controller, but it could boot from a PCMCIA CF adapter. (My 600X will not boot from a PCMCIA SD card reader though.)

There are more options, James. I take it you want to use the stick so you can move it around from machine to machine.

1) You could make a small DOS or Linux partition on your hard drive that has drivers for your USB drive and boots Linux from there.

2) If you don't want to modify your hard drive, you could make a CD or floppy that does the same.

3) uhmm.... Install Linux on your hard drive and have it mount parts of the memory stick (such as /home) so your user data stays on the stick.

4) ... .... hack the BIOS to boot from USB.

Lots of ways to get things done.

The idea of it would be to have a persistent Linux installation on the drive, along with whatever tools I use. The main goal would be portability/versatility, so I wouldn't need it to be fast. By using USB, I can load the stuff onto any computer. The drive doesn't necessarily have to have Ubuntu on it, but that's what I'm trying.

I've been thinking about it more and I might have something. It seems that 600X's can boot from USB floppy drives (from what I can see in this thread). If I could get a flash drive to emulate a floppy, I could probably have the 600X (or any other older laptop) boot from it. Any ideas on this?

James , you might be onto something there. Have a look below for more details:

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/1-vt65107.html?start=0
(see explanation of makebootfat)

The 600X will not boot from a USB floppy drive. You'd need the external floppy that worked with the 600's, many 500's and other machines. That same drive will work if you swap it into the UltraSlimBay.

With what I wrote above, you'd be able to have the thumb drive boot on any other machine, but in your 600X, it would have to boot something else first.