[mdlug] "Damn Small Machine" startup problems

[David McMillan]

On 5/5/2011 8:03 AM, Carl T. Miller wrote:
> David McMillan wrote:
>> 	A few weeks ago, I purchased one of these:
>> http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/store/Mini_ITX_Systems/Damn_Small_Machine_No_Drive
>>
>> 	It would have been nearly perfect for what I needed it to do, but I
>> can't get it to boot.  It has no onboard drive, but it seems as if I
>> ought to be able to boot it from USB without any issues.
> Have you tried network booting?  I have a few small devices
> that boot from the network.  It doesn't take too long to
> set up dhcp, tftp and dns on a linux server.
>
> Also I've read that there are a couple of formats used by
> usb flash drives.  As I understand it, one way creates
> partitions and the other uses the whole device without
> partitioning.  Have you tried both methods?
     I'll admit that I just used whatever UNetbootin uses.  But since 
the USB drives show up as single-partition FAT32 devices on other 
machines, I'm fairly confident that there's no Strange Partition Games 
going on.
     I've never tried network booting before -- that's an interesting 
idea, although I'm not sure where to start.  I suppose the first thing 
to check is whether the BIOS supports network boot.