On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 5:56 PM, eculbert <
eculbert@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I recently got a dell optiplex gx270, p4 2.8 mhz, 1gb ram, w/40gb hd. I
> would like to 'play' with a couple distro's on a usb hd adapter box and boot
> from them. I cannot bring the monitor..riding the bus, but can bring all
> else in a backpack. So would like to play with fedora and ubuntu and set it
> to boot from those two via grub or whatever w/o touching the internal hd if
> possible. The bios has supposedly a 'selection' of usb or internal hd. I
> have never done that and hopefully someone can furnish a monitor as carrying
> a monitor AND the other stuff plus my bicycle on city buses is a bit much.
> Let me know either via re to this or privately.
With luck, someone else will bring a monitor you can borrow. Even though we
migh manage to use one of the schools monitors, I don't really think we have
permission to do that.
I'm not quite sure what you are asking for. Are you wanting grub on the
internal hard disk to know about and be able to boot to a removable usb hard
drive? That sounds very odd indeed. If not that, I might think to
temporarily disable the internal hard drive, plug in the usb hard drive and
do an install to it so that that usb drive is basically a stand alone
bootable system. Then once you re-enable the internal hard drive, hopefully
the system would normally boot from it but you could the BIOS boot menu when
you want to boot from the usb hard drive. I am not sure the gx270 bios will
do that but we could try it. Sounds like fun. If I have misunderstood what
you are wanting, I apologize.
>
>
> I have pclinuxos on another hd, and put that in the box, told the bios to
> look at the usb and it sat there for well over a minute before I gave up. I
> thought it should have came up, but then those os's on that hd were setup on
> a p3-800..don't know if that mattered to attempt or not..like I said, newbie
> to usb booting here. The box is seen and I copied files over to the 40
> internal just fine. Maybe I 'jumped' too soon, but it just hung on usb
> booting. I can download files from it, but didn't boot from it or attempt to
> and fail...just blank screen when trying to boot off the old hd.
>
> Oh, the usb box will have a 'virgin' hd in it or can be reformatted as
> nothing important is on it. I bought that hd awhile back..wd brand and I
> don't think anything is on it. Will put in the usb adapter box.
>
> I have pclinuxos2009 installed on the 40.
>
> The cdrom, yes, an old cdrom only that came with it sometimes takes 2-5
> retries to pickup an install disk! Hey, it IS an old system from some office
> sold via a dealer at the swapmeet. So if someone has a usb cdrom, maybe that
> or net install might be the way to go to the usb hd. It took reboot about 5
> times for its cdrom to find the pclinuxos cdrom before timeout and default
> to the xp hd. But seems to do okay once the cdrom beats the timer! Oh, this
> is the 'low profile' box so it uses a laptop disk type cdrom/dvd
> reader/writers, not the full sized ones.
Maybe it just has a dirty lens but it seems like the thin models for laptops
don't last as long as the full size optical drives. BTW, for about $17 you
can buy a simple usb to IDE/sata convertor for both 2.5 and 3.5" drives. No
case and ugly but it works and then you could try regular sized recycled
drives on the cheap. I will try to remember to bring mine so you can see it
and we can use it if needed
>
>
> Anyhow, would like a cdrom(s) copy possibly. Or do you want me to burn
> fedora core and ubuntu with the 'ancient one' cdrom burner on the old
> system..p3-800 myself and which 'flavor' to burn. \
>
> I mostly just surf and save files related to ham radio mostly.
>
> I am tight $$$ wise, not tightwad, just no wad of $$$ to be loose with!!
> other than my brain!! hihi.
>
> 73
>
> Ed/ke7feg ....Now that 'the heat' is here, Hurry up November!
>
> On 2/23/2007 the morse code requirement was dropped for getting
> a ham license. Now just pass the written exams which are on the
> web at arrl.org for questions and http://www.kb0mga.net/exams/
>
>
>
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--
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
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