[lug] External USB floppy drives and driver diskettes

[Hugh Brown]

karl horlen wrote:
>> 2) HP makes a windows app that will allow you to
>> take a dd/rawrite image 
>> of a floppy and put it on a usb stick.  Whether or
>> not you can boot from 
>> a usb device is a function of the BIOS of the
>> machine.  I believe most 
>> recent machines will.  Older machines sometimes call
>> the usb boot device 
>> ZIP100 or similar.
> 
> IIRC, this is why I never went down this road when it
> I came up against it last time.  I kept finding posts
> about this hp utility but I could only find it on
> third party sites or postings that I wasn't
> comfortable downloading from.  I wasn't sure if it was
> trustworthy or not.  And by the time I was finished
> doing a preliminary investigation, I could have opened
> up a pc and transferred the HW.
> 
> Have you ever actually used it?  Do you have a copy of
> it and instructions?  
> 
>> 3) Whether you can boot from a usb device is a
>> function of the BIOS. 
> 
> Although it would be nice to boot from it, in the
> cases I presented above, I'm asking more or less if it
> will just "be seen" by the installer which has already
> booted from CD or DVD rom.  I guess it depends if the
> installer has a driver that supports it or not.  Or if
> the BIOS is smart enough to see it as if it were a
> vanilla internally connected floppy?
> 
> Booting from it would of course be determined by the
> BIOS.
> 
>> The only time I've needed a floppy disk in the last
>> 3 years was to flash 
> 
> It is indeed very infrequent.  But when it does happen
> it's annoying.
> 
>> everything to a floppy disk."  Very gradually, the
>> bios writing dept of 
>> the big vendors are starting to process that the
>> hardware side of the 
>> house isn't shipping floppy drives any more.
> 
> They're really behind on this one.  USB sticks are
> today's floppies.  BIOS, driver and other floppy based
> updates should be made to work from USB flash drives.
> I can't think of any excuses why they shouldn't.


I've used the HP tool, but it has a couple of modes and since I only 
ever need it once or twice a year, I have to relearn which mode I want/need.

I'll see if I can dig up a link.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/23839.html

If you are already booted via cd/dvd, then the ability to see a usb 
device (floppy or otherwise) is a function of the booted kernel/os.

Hugh