Older Motherboards - No USB Boot


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I tried again formating with the HP Tool and still no go. Still can't see any files on C: drive by using dir

 

The flash is a 2gig, its not one of the official supported drive but shouldn't I still beable to see its contents at the C: prompt?

Many of the older BIOS were written when a 256 Meg flash drive was HUGE.  I would not be surprised if the 2 Gig one will never boot on that older motherboard.

 

I suggest a 128 Meg or 256 Meg flash drive for your experiments with that older motherboard.

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The flash is a 2gig, its not one of the official supported drive but shouldn't I still beable to see its contents at the C: prompt?

I agree, you should still be able to see it (depending on the bios).

Try formatting the first partition to something under 512MB and see how that goes.

I think there are other instructions on the board to format the device to loop like a zip drive.

In that respect it is either 100MB or 250MB.

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Another update, I have a Scandisk Cruzer Micro 256meg but it still doens't work

You might be forced to use a floppy disk (search for "kicker disk") to boot from initially if your older MB bios does not support USB flash drive booting.  Before you do, you are using the "-ma" option to syslinux, right?  to add a MBR and mark the partition as bootable?

 

Joe L.

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Yes the kicker is the problem, doesn't seem to see the content of the Flash. I did try flashing with the -ma option once also which didn't have an effect.

 

Booting from a CD could be an option, I was trying to leave the server as stripped down as possible and not have a CD drive in it, leave another HD space.

 

Just seems their has to be away, jcolo says he got it to work.

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have you tried with the smaller pen drive or smaller partitions that mimic a zip drive?

I understand not wanting to have a CD-ROM installed, but you have to also consider, with the basic/free version you can only have 3 hard drives anyway.

 

Once you have the OS on the hard drive, it is possible to boot from floppy with grub or grub4dos.

I found grub4dos to be easier because it can search all of your hard drives finding a menu.lst and using that.

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Is their a copy of a CD boot disc that works with UnRaid to download and where?

 

I do not know of one that has been published. There may be some instructions on the board,

 

FWIW, It's also possible to make a bootable dos partitioned harddrive with the bzimage/bzroot files and boot from there.

(if you have an older junky hard drive around).  ::) I still have 1.2 and 2.8G's laying around LOL!!!

 

It's only needed long enough to boot, thereafter it would not be used and chances are unRAID will see the boot flash if it has been set up properly.

 

I did this during my initial testing of unRAID. Many moons ago.

 

I was playing with grub and grub4dios floppies a few weeks ago, so I know once you copy the /boot files from the usb key into /mnt/disk1/boot it's possible to boot from the drive via floppy once the menu.lst is created.

I do have a floppy image of grub4dos.

 

I know it's a bit cumbersome.. I just had not gotten around to creating a nice unRAID boot cd yet.

I was putting all sorts of tools on mine.. Probably should have just created the CD first. LOL!!!  ;D

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I say make a bootable cd and go from there. Might be easier to find an old CDROM drive from someone's closet then a motherboard to fit your RDRAM.  Once you have unRAID up, you can test if it meets your needs, then decide how to boot it (from cd, directly from hard drive via grub4dos floppy kicker, or from different USB key).

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We have a working UnRaid server!!!

 

jimwhite is correct you need to format the flash as FAT not FAT32

 

So for anyone else that is trying this, here is what worked for me.

 

1) Format the flash as FAT then create it just as the Lime Technology instruction

 

2) Create a floppy boot disc with the Panosonic Version of the Kicker Floppy found here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lou.greyfaulk/

 

3) Change the command line in the autoexec.bat file on the floppy to: LINLD image=c:BZIMAGE initrd=c:BZROOT "cl=root=/dev/sda1"

 

The only thing I run into is that about every other time it will hang when loading the bzimage, all you get is a flashing cursor. Turning off and back on has always worker, not a big deal seeing as it will never get shut down once running in my case.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I was having extreme troubles booting even with the instruction provided.....here's a little gotchya that will catch others if going by the instructions word for word...

 

In the autoexec.bat file you need to change the command to: A:\LINLD.com image=c:BZIMAGE initrd=c:BZROOT "cl=root=/dev/sda1"

 

Not LINLD image=c:BZIMAGE initrd=c:BZROOT "cl=root=/dev/sda1"

 

Otherwise it wont load LINDLD and nothing happens....once you get past that all shoudl work fine:)

 

I really do think this post needs to be stickied, as it's very useful info.....i was happy to know my old UNSUPPORTED mobo can now be a fully functional UNRAID SERVER:)

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I was having extreme troubles booting even with the instruction provided.....here's a little gotchya that will catch others if going by the instructions word for word...

 

In the autoexec.bat file you need to change the command to: A:\LINLD.com image=c:BZIMAGE initrd=c:BZROOT "cl=root=/dev/sda1"

 

Not LINLD image=c:BZIMAGE initrd=c:BZROOT "cl=root=/dev/sda1"

 

Otherwise it wont load LINDLD and nothing happens....once you get past that all shoudl work fine:)

 

I really do think this post needs to be stickied, as it's very useful info.....i was happy to know my old UNSUPPORTED mobo can now be a fully functional UNRAID SERVER:)

 

Funny mine has been working fine with out the ".com" addition.....

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  • 7 months later...

FreeDos 1.44M STD Image with grub4dos.

 

Hopefully this floppy kicker will help once you get the files installed onto a hard drive.

If I have a chance this weekend I'll try and make a CD Image. If I do, I'll distribute via torrent, so you would need a torrent client.

 

http://www.cotrone.com/rob/projects/unraid/fdstd144.zip

 

I know this is thread necromancy, but I've been trying for a couple of days to get my older machine to run UNRAID. It's an older Elitegroup K7S6A mobo and for some reason will not boot off the USB flash. I've tried several utilities and a few other flash drives with no luck. So I resorted to trying to make a bootable CDROM, unfortunately with no luck. Would you mind posting that ISO? Or some instructions on how to setup UNRAID on a CDROM? I've searched here and on other forums, but the threads seem to lead to incomplete instructions or outdated dead links.

 

Thank you.

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