- 2006-12-01: merged Pieter's thread ("Recover from bad flashing with automated NVIDIA VIDEO BIOS flashing procedure) into this one.
- 2005-09-29: added table
- 2005-07-05: [Bay Wolf] reports that Inspiron 600m and Inspiron 8500 "have the ability to boot from a USB external floppy drive, USB CD, USB hard drive or a USB memory key."
Must be a BIOS limitation i figured.
Now after weeks of frustating tries i got a nice collection of tools which i will post here, but still i haven't reached my goal to get rid of Floppy drive and use the much comfortable USB Stick which as main reason why i want that is getting rid of the capacity limit of Floppy Disks and *speed*.
Today i got an 128MN SD-Card and used a Toshiba tool to make it bootable, but also booting from an SD-Card is NOT supported by BIOS though it's an feature which the TECRA series has and in my humble opinion would be nice if there is some way to also implement it in the BIOS of Satellite 5xx0 series.
Currently i use the SWISSBIT Twist 256 MB USB2.0 (Hi-Speed) Drive with USB-FDD, USB-HDD, USB-ZIP Boot capabilities (Legacy supported BIOS). You can create 2 partitions with their tool (SecureLOCK, download HERE ), one can be "secured" and only be accessed with a given password, the other one can be written and read without passwort.
Here are my findings, facts & assumptions, listed without order and not printable (brainstorm ?.../):
- there are 4 USB Boot Modi existant: USB-FDD, USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CD
- it seems that there even is kind of an USB-FDD emulation mode in Tohsiba 5205 (as seen in the hardware.ini file of the Toshiba Hardware application (WinBIOS), which enables the recognition and booting of USB Floppy Drives
- USB Sticks in common use USB-ZIP boot ID
- there are a few USB Sticks available which support more than 1 USB ID for booting like SwissBit.com and another one
- SD-Card booting is supported by TECRA series and there is an official tool existant from TOSHIba for that
- Drive Letters for USB Drives should be A:\ (or B:\) if you want to use tools to access the Stick and make it bootable (WinImage or OEM Tools), if not in certain cases (not always) you cannot access certain functions)
- most of the mainboard BIOS on modern (>2002) Desktop PCs support at least USB-ZIP or all USB-Boot Modi
- I don't know how DELL handles it or other laptop manufacturers.
Laptop ................ | bootable from SD-Card? | boots from USB .. |
**********************************************************************
Portege M 200 ......... | yes .................. | ................. |
Portege M 300 ......... | yes .................. | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Portege R 100 ......... | no ................... | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Satellite 5205-S703 ... | no ................... | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Tecra 9100 ............ | no ................... | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Tecra A2 .............. | no .(no SD-Card slot). | ................. |
Tecra A3 .............. | no ................... | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Tecra M1 .............. | no ................... | ................. |
Tecra M2 .............. | yes .................. | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
Tecra S1 .............. | no ................... | ................. |
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
------------------------+------------------------+-------------------|
DELL Inspiron 600m .... | ...................... | yes.............. |
DELL Inspiron 8500 .... | ...................... | yes.............. |
Edited by ®®®, 01 December 2006 - 08:02 AM.
