95-98 pc

[rockidr4]

I have some ancient hardware that I'm trying to breath new life into. It originally ran win95 which is Why I think it was made sometime between 95 and 98. It's bios don't work in any fashion that I am used to however. Right now i have it set up to boot from cd, however my only livecd is Ubuntu, and while I could get it working, since it doesn't move too quickly on my more recent laptop, I thought it would be better to use DSL. so. The BIOS settings for the boot order include A, B, C, D, E, F and cddrive. My questions for you are, will my usb2.0 flash drive work, and if so can I boot from it by setting it to boot from "F" which is the name the drive is given in windows. I'm pretty sure this computer was top of the line way back when it was made. this is really just a side project of mine which I am undertaking because I feel like it, so anything goes, don't worry about destroying through whatever wacky advice you have, it came out of a dumpster, and I know how to put it back there if necessary.

[oz]

My questions for you are, will my usb2.0 flash drive work, and if so can I boot from it by setting it to boot from "F" which is the name the drive is given in windows.

Does your BIOS support booting from USB devices? If not, you might check the motherboard manufacturer's website for a BIOS upgrade that will.

[rokytnji]

Give F a try after making a bootable USB using Unetbootin

I have had luck running Browser Puppy Linux on a pre 2000 laptop. Comes with Firefox 3.5 version also.

[rokytnji]

If you need extra packages for Browser pup you can look at link below

Puppy Linux Discussion Forum :: View topic - Browserlinux with Firefox 3.5.1

[rockidr4]

Okay, thanks, i was thinking f was the right one. if not I'll just try all the other letters, and then the Ubuntu cd.

[bigtomrodney]

USB booting was really only introduced around 2001-2002, but you never know it might work The bad news is that even if it does it'll likely be USB 1.0 which will get you a theoretical maximum read of 1.5MB/s as opposed to an internal drive running at 50-65 MB/s.

Actually you may be surprised to know that ElTorito booting wasn't even widely supported until the late 90's. I was lucky enough to have a board in 97 that did it but it seemed to be the exception looking at some of the other hardware that's landed on my workbench over the years.

If you're not having any luck, you can try using SmartBootManager to boot from floppy first and then from CD or other device.

[rockidr4]

My plan is to use the usb to install something onto the hard drive, unless that's broken, in which case I'm going to try and get more familiar with computer hard ware, such as taking the advice from ozar, and upgrade the motherboard. but I must ask. what is eltorito booting, I would be lying if I said I was familiar with the term.

[bigtomrodney]

Sorry for that jargon, just thinking back to that era brought it fresh to mind. It's just the standard extension to the CD specification that allows it to be a bootable media. Basically, a bootable CD. I was thinking back to my Pentium 200MHz (with MMX!!) and I remembered how it had the El Torito option in the CMOS. I didn't hear the term until about 2002-2003 when I was playing around with Linux for the first time.

That's the gyst of it but here's a bit more if you're interested :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_(CD-ROM_standard)