[IAEP] Experiences with Soas2-200904231400.iso

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi,

Unburrying old email.

I have a bug in on the need for a floppy boot-helper:
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/597

James are there any notes that you can add to the ticket to help someone who
takes on this task?

Is there anyone out there who would like to take on this task?

Thanks,
Caroline

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 10:23 AM, James Simmons <jim.simmons at walgreens.com>wrote:

> Caroline,
>
> Normally the System BIOS recognizes the devices installed on your system.
>  The BIOS is a kind of software that runs before your operating system runs.
>  Your operating system often will work with the BIOS rather than working
> with hardware directly.  In any case, this boot disk is doing something
> clever, in that it can find USB drives and make them bootable without help
> from the BIOS.  Apparently it can only find them if they are attached
> directly to the motherboard, and on the older computers that need such a
> diskette to work that generally limits you to the slower USB 1.1.
>
> The guy who wrote this knows more about how computer hardware works than a
> typical programmer knows.  He may have reverse engineered something or he
> may know trade secrets he would not be allowed to reveal.  That would
> prevent a GPL version.
>
> In any case, it doesn't work well enough to be a good alternative to a boot
> CD and it is not likely it could be made to work better than it does.  It
> looks like the original goal of PLOP was to provide tools to recover data
> from or repair computers that cannot be booted up normally.  For that
> purpose it's more than adequate.
>
> As for having a boot CD that did not have its own kernel, you have the same
> issues with that as you would with the boot diskette.  There would be no
> advantage to using a CD versus a diskette.  In fact the diskette does its
> work very quickly.  If you had an older computer that allowed you to boot
> from USB but only recognized 1.1 ports you'd have the same situation.
>
> You might try making the diskette following the instructions on that
> website.  It isn't that difficult, and the software doesn't cost anything to
> download.
> James Simmons
>
>
>  Interesting.  How hard would it be for someone to create a GPL version of
>> a boot diskette?  Would it necessarily only recognize USB 1.1? Even if it
>> does, the computers that I want it for probably only have USB 1.1 ports.
>>
>> Having the CD have a kernel on it seems to be problematical because that
>> means we often need a new CD for every new version.  I don't thoroughly
>> understand the technology here.  What is the theoretical minimum we need on
>> a CD or Diskette to enable boot on a computer that can not boot directly
>> from a USB?
>> thanks!
>> Caroline
>>
>
>
>


-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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