Booting into USB CDROM

[jamesosw]

Yes once yes a million times, I had check through forums and googled up my problem, and non of the solution so far had worked. I had been trying to installed Slackware 10.1 to my Sony VAIO PCR-Z505. The PCMICA cdrom is no longer working therefore I used a USB Cdrom instate. I got the files from Slackware Mirror site: the boot disks and the root disks.

The problem now is I'm still not able to boot to the Cdrom for Installation!! I tried using the Loadlin way, create boot disk but failed while loading vmlinuz, saying kernal panic something something which i cant recall. I'm not able to use the network installation as my NIC is not recongnized.

Can anyone suggest me an efficient method of installing or share with me thier experience on how to solve this matter.

Thanks. :(

[Icarus]

I'm guessing...Have you set the machine to boot off the USB in the BIOS and enabled USB support via the BIOS since the system will rely on the OS for USB drivers otherwise

[jmatus]

hi james,
i'm no linux guru......just a novice.......
but what i can tell you is that from a hardware standpoint it would be impossible to boot from a usb cdrom for the fundamental reason that the bios does not natively recognize USB as a boot option.......at least this is true for computer that are a few years old anyhow, and i've not got my hands on any new computers to see what the bios will suport these days. but if your machine is a few years old then you are probably out of luck. the best that you could do would be to boot from a floppy (which you said that you could not do) and then install from the usb cdrom (if you had the usb drivers on the boot disk to give support for the device.
hopefully i'm wrong about this and there is some new kewl-and-groovy technique to use.....but i've never heard of any.

[jamesosw]

I'm guessing...Have you set the machine to boot off the USB in the BIOS and enabled USB support via the BIOS since the system will rely on the OS for USB drivers otherwise
my BIOS is not supporting USB boot, which is the main problem right now. I had made a "USB detectable" floppy for DOS but is doesn't have the autobooting feature.

[jamesosw]

hi james,
i'm no linux guru......just a novice.......
but what i can tell you is that from a hardware standpoint it would be impossible to boot from a usb cdrom for the fundamental reason that the bios does not natively recognize USB as a boot option.......at least this is true for computer that are a few years old anyhow, and i've not got my hands on any new computers to see what the bios will suport these days. but if your machine is a few years old then you are probably out of luck. the best that you could do would be to boot from a floppy (which you said that you could not do) and then install from the usb cdrom (if you had the usb drivers on the boot disk to give support for the device.
hopefully i'm wrong about this and there is some new kewl-and-groovy technique to use.....but i've never heard of any.

It seems that there are a few types of methods that had been posted at this forum but most of the solutions are not stated clearly. Most of the posts just mention that they finally get the USB CDROM to work and got the installation working. Argh...I don't feel like dumping this old yet decent Laptop of mine, is kinda light, that's why I wish to migrate to Linux for a test drive. But now it seems that I'm stuck. I would really hope that someone could provide me a clearer guide or suggestion to help me with this.