Nice devices... I want 8 of them...

[R3C]

USB Booting:
Our friends over at Kingston were kind enough to give us 10, 128MB Kingston Data Travelers to give out as prizes at our Winter [H]ardware Workshop. Of course, being the greedy bastard that I am, I kept one for myself to use on the test bench. If you find yourself needing to move around tidbits of data and do not have the luxury of always having a network handy, these little USB solid-state data storage devices are a real value.

Many of the new Intel brand mainboards (and a few other retail brands) have a bootable USB option. This should be commonplace on all mainboards before long. Anyway, I got to wondering what all was needed to boot from one of these Data Traveler devices or if it was even possible. So I copied a Windows 98 boot disk over onto the stick, set the board to boot from USB, and placed it in the USB port as shown.




Low and behold, my machine booted right up. I tried copying over bootable programs such as Ghost and some BIOS flashing programs and all worked without a hitch.

Now I am sure that many of you are already aware of this, but it was one of those things that snuck up on me and surprised me with its simplicity. Maybe we really are that much closer to chunkin' those floppy drives?

[McNevin]

Kill the floppie, kill the floppie, Kill the floppie!

That USB thingy sounds pretty handy, even w/o the boot option.

[Megatron]

but unfortunately they are only 8mb

[enderzero]

8MB is enuf to boot Ghost - making that thing worth every penny right there. It's enuf to boot DOS, with CD and network drivers. It's enuf to play a handful of old games if you have the right DOS-USB drivers (???).

Ditch the legacy box...here comes the legacy keychain.

Yeah - that is a splendid application to have a small device for booting to. The end is near floppy dear! bwaahahaaa.

Actually I have been living a floppy free existence as long as I have only had my notebook. Can't exactly say I miss em.

[R3C]

... they come in 128, 256, and 512 as well. I'm not sure how available the large ones are. I've seen 128MB ones. I could probably actually use my 128MB SD card and the little reader in the same way though. Not much bigger either. I emailed panasonic to find out how to get the software for my MP3 player, but once again they ignored my request. As much as I like their products, I hate them!!!! Jerks!!!! I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!!! Tell them I hate them!!! All I need is a frickin' CD with RealOne for Panasonic. I can't believe that I have to check out music that I made to the device. Oh well, I'll just have two folders, one for checkout, and one that doesn't get touched. Hey Ender, if it's convenient, if you're ever near a Bic Camera, can you find out if they sell the software for it there. Apparently it is sold separately from the player in Japan. If it is, perhaps I could transfer you some funds. And instead of mailing it, you could just rip the software off the disc, and I could D/L it from you. Or something. I'm willing to pay for it, if they would just fuqing reply to me. Jerks! Jerks! Jerks! They make 512MB SD cards for it now. I'd buy one of those too if I had the Fraqing software so I could use it. Big mean Jerks!!!

[enderzero]

I'll look into it. What's the model number? They sell that in America now don't they?

[R3C]

... the SD-80. They do sell it here, but it comes with everything it needs to function. They don't offer any useful downloads on their site, and their support ignores me, never calls me back, never actually escalates my problem like they say they will, and don't answer my emails. They are Jerks!!! Anyway, thanks for checking.

[Megatron]

....Goodbye Mr. Burton...

[R3C]

... really pisses me off to no end!!!