cd to boot usb .isos

[fldav76]

SO i've decided to try out debian stable with fluxbox as a lightwieght os for an old laptop (gateway 1450, 256ram, 1.33ghx).

not i'm trying to aviod burning 25 cd's just to try out different distros.

i'd like to burn one cd that contains a command line enviroment where i can navigate to my usb drive and boot the .iso of the distro i want to install.

is that possible?

i've read about grub loaders, plop loaders, lfs, and a few others...but no solid hits.

so i'm only looking for a cd that can load usb drivers and such to enable me to say, "hey cpu...go over to usb/distros/debian.iso...and boot from that".

any thoughts?
thanks

[rokytnji]

USB booting is determined by bios as far as I know. If your bios doesn't have USB boot capabilities, which judging by your specs it probably doesn't. You might check out Smartbootmanger.

[fldav76]

thanks for the reply.

i had looked that over...and i'm sure that among the options i've seen one will do the trick...but i don't know enough about it to go on without a bit of advice and a walkthrough.

has anyone done this?

also, i should note that i'm not dead set on booting .iso's from my usb...i could extract the files instead...
so the cd only has to get me to a point where the usb is seen and the downloaded distros can be run some how.

any info appreciated.
thanks

[rokytnji]

Take what I wrote for making a smartbootmanager floppy on my tutorial (I hope you have a floppy drive) and run with that I guess.

Yet Another Technology Site: Compaq Armada 1540DM running Windows 95 and Linux Puppy 2.15CE

[Rubberman]

I've used CD+RW drives to install/boot various Linux liveCD's and installations. It's simple enough to re-burn them with another one at any time.

[vickey_20]

try unetbootin