WakeUSB - make old PC's boot Puppy from USB - please test :)

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pakt
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WakeUSB - make old PC's boot Puppy from USB - please test :)

#1 Post by pakt »

If your PC's BIOS cannot be configured to boot Puppy from a USB drive then WakeUSB (on floppy or CD) may be able to help. Just copy the disk image to a floppy or burn the iso image to a CD and give it a try.

This is an early version of WakeUSB and I would like as much feedback as possible on how well it works. I'm open to any suggestions that will improve this tool. Please reply to this thread if it does (or does not) work with your USB flash device and PC. This is helpful information that can be of use to other Puppy owners.

Unlike BOOT2PUP and WakePup, WakeUSB is compatible with Puppy USB flash drives made by Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard, 'Option 2'. This is the option recommended by Barry which creates a pupxxx file on the USB flash drive. WakeUSB will boot these drives with just the addition of the empty marker file PUPXUSB which can be copied from the WakeUSB floppy or CD.

IF you don't want to use Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard to make the Puppy flash drive, you can do it manually by copying the following files to a FAT16 formated USB Flash drive:

VMLINUZ, IMAGE.GZ, USR_CRAM.FS and ISOLINUX.CFG (from Puppy CD)
and PUPXUSB (an empty marker file - can be copied from WakeUSB)

and you are ready to boot it with WakeUSB. No messing with the MBR is necessary.

Once you have put the Puppy files on the USB flash drive, connect it to your PC's USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 port then boot WakeUSB from floppy or CD. If WakeUSB's USB driver finds your flash drive, WakeUSB will present a list of parameters it thinks should be used to boot Puppy, including the ramdisk_size parameter if it is present. If you want to change a parameter before booting, WakeUSB has a special menu where this can be done.

When WakeUSB boots the USB flash drive for the first time, Puppy will create a PUP100 file on the flash drive (unless you have changed the PHOME parameter to put it on another drive). This may take a while, especially if the flash drive is connected to a USB 1.1 port. Puppy will then start like usual by letting you choose the keyboard keymap, the mouse and the screen resolution setting.

WakeUSB is also able to boot non-standard Puppies (such as ChubbyPuppy, PizzaPup, etc) that have the ramdisk_size parameter set in isolinux.cfg or syslinux.cfg. Please be aware that this may cause more wear on your USB device as tmpfs f.s. may not be in use with these Puppies. See Barry's warning in the 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard.

Note: You can check if tmpfs is mounted and thereby minimizing writes to the flash drive by executing the 'df' command from a terminal. If 'tmpfs' is shown under Filesystem, then writing to flash has been minimized.

OK, so why go through the bother of booting a floppy or CD which in turn boots a USB drive? Here are a couple of reasons:

- The main reason is that it allows an older PC that refuses to boot from USB to have the same advantages of using a USB flash drive with PUP100 on it as a newer PC that does. Puppy is completely on the flash drive - no files are written to the hard disk. Nice and portable.

- You may already have a Puppy USB flash drive that boots directly from USB on your latest PC but you would also like to use the flash drive on an older PC that cannot boot from USB.

- A USB flash drive is more flexible than a multisession CD which requires a CD burner.

- A USB flash drive is re-useable. Puppy's 'Install Puppy USB drive' wizard will easily replace an old version of Puppy with a new one. Or just manually copy a few files from the CD to the USB device, add PUPXUSB and you are ready to boot it with WakeUSB. No messing with the MBR is necessary.

Q: Will WakeUSB work with my USB flash device?

A: There are a number of USB controller chips used in PC's as well as in USB flash drives (pens, cards, etc). The USB driver used by WakeUSB can identify and use only a number of these, so there is no guarantee of success. The only way to find out is to try to boot with your flash drive and see if the driver finds it or not.

Q: How will I know if WakeUSB finds my USB flash device?

A: WakeUSB will pause after the USB driver has scanned for USB devices. If it identifies one, it will print a short id string and assign a drive letter to it. If not, the driver will print "Target USB device not found". If it cannot find a USB device, it may help to reformat the device even if it is already FAT16-formatted. This has worked for me in one case.

Additional Note: WakeUSB runs in FreeDOS and will complain if it, during searching, tries to read an NTFS partition. You'll see a message similar to:

Code: Select all

Error reading from drive C: DOS area: general failure
(A)bort, (I)gnore, (R)etry, (F)ail?
Just press 'F' and WakeUSB will happily continue to the next drive.

More info in the README.TXT file in each zip archive.

UPDATE 4-Nov-05: Replaced WakeUSB v0.1d with v0.1e. Re-wrote the README.TXT to add more detail. Added drive C to the search made for 'pupxusb' (from a suggestion on the Puppy forum that some PC's may not have a hard disk). Made some cosmetic changes to autoexec.bat.

First is the CD image. Note that the burned CD will appear empty - all files are burned into the CD's boot record. Good thing CD's are cheap ;)[/code]
Last edited by pakt on Fri 04 Nov 2005, 18:04, edited 5 times in total.

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pakt
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#2 Post by pakt »

UPDATE 4-Nov-05: Same as above post

Here is the floppy image of WakeUSB. I've included the README.TXT in this archive as well.

Any testers out there?

:D
Last edited by pakt on Fri 04 Nov 2005, 16:08, edited 1 time in total.

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gliezl
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#3 Post by gliezl »

I'll be buying a 128MB USB drive. What brand would you suggest that is not too expensive but has good quality?

I'll give it a try. Good work! :)
[color=blue][i]"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."
~Margaret Fuller[/i][/color]

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dvw86
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#4 Post by dvw86 »

gliezl wrote:I'll be buying a 128MB USB drive. What brand would you suggest that is not too expensive but has good quality?

I'll give it a try. Good work! :)
Go for the Super Talent or Kanguru. The Kanguru's can kind of be a port hog since they are a little wide and can block the port next to them, but they work well. Or you can email me from my web site usb-linux.com and I'll install it on a 128MB stick for you.

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pakt
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#5 Post by pakt »

gliezl wrote:I'll be buying a 128MB USB drive. What brand would you suggest that is not too expensive but has good quality?

I'll give it a try. Good work! :)
Thanks :)

I used my Dell Inspiron 510m with USB2.0 and two old Thinkpad laptops, a 240X and a T20, both with USB1.1 for testing. The Dell BIOS was configured to boot CD before USB.

I tested WakeUSB using three brands of flash pens, all USB2.0, and a SanDisk ImageMate USB2.0 CF adapter with three brands of CF cards (Viking 128M, DaneElec 128M and Pilotech 128M).

The SanDisk Cruzer Mini & Cruzer Micro flash pens (I have several in different sizes) and the ImageMate + 3 CF cards were the only flash drives that would boot from all three laptops.

Both the TwinMOS USB2.0 128M flash pen and the PNY Attache 128M flash pen resulted in the "Target USB device not found" driver message on the ThinkPads, but worked without problem on the Dell.

To answer your question, I would recommend the SanDisk Cruzer Mini & Cruzer Micro pens. I had no problem with them at all, and they are fast. They are also among the cheapest pens I've seen. (I should get a commision for writting this :wink:)

Good luck with your testing :)

EDIT: I should add that the SanDisk flash pens are very slim and won't block other USB ports. They were also rated best-in-test in a Swedish computer mag.

PeterSieg
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Does not work :(

#6 Post by PeterSieg »

Hi pakt.

Tried 128M Rundisk + 256M Fundisk (MP3 Player). Both are not
recognized/found :(

PS
Have fun :)

Guest

install .iso from cd after wakeup?

#7 Post by Guest »

Hi Pakt

I was sent here by MU, he has my thanks.

I donate computers and install several distros depending on the needs of the person.

However, just for myself, I have a Dell Latitude CPi with a 24x speed cdrom.

I want to dual boot several distros with Win2K that is on the machine, one at a time, as I have time, just to try them, (I have to have the Win2K for the j/c whereat I teach).

I've tried to dual install MANY distros on the machine, both as install and live(including Puppy, which by the way is a nice distro, my better half LOVES the dog..) and get part way through or just nothing, because of the speed of the cdrom, it's just too slow, I normlly use a 52x speed.

I was loaned a USB cdrom "box" and thought MAYBE the software would force the laptop to see the USB box, before bootup of Win2K but it doesn't.

The Bios has a nice menu of boot options but usb isn't one of them.

I was given a hint about the wakeup floppy and came here and MU sent me here.

So, question is...... given that you are using wakeup to enable a flash drive,

a) I couldn't tell from the threads, but I got the impression that these are not "dual boot things".

b) do you think there might be some way to get the wakeup on a cdrom to also notice the usb cdrom to install an iso before win2k starts loading, like would normally happen in a dual install?

I would like to compliment the folks on their very organized way of reporting which pen drives work..... good job.


To repeat more simply. This is just my idea, if you have done this and have a way then I would be glad to hear it.

If I put the wakeup on a cdrom in the normal bay, I guess, would it then "wakeup the usbports" and that then allow the distro I wished to install to start installing from the usb cdrom box, like trying to install upon the computer starting, before Win2K started loading, and thus getting a dual install?

Upon looking back that is very confusing, and I'm the one that wrote it! :lol:

Any help you might point me at will be greatly appreciated.

thanks ahead of time,

woodsmoke

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pakt
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Re: install .iso from cd after wakeup?

#8 Post by pakt »

woodsmoke wrote: If I put the wakeup on a cdrom in the normal bay, I guess, would it then "wakeup the usbports" and that then allow the distro I wished to install to start installing from the usb cdrom box, like trying to install upon the computer starting, before Win2K started loading, and thus getting a dual install?
I think I understand what you're getting at. You want to boot Puppy from a CD-ROM that is in a USB adapter box plugged in to a PC that normally boots Win2K. I'll assume that's what you mean...

First off, we are talking about two different utilities: WakePup & WakeUSB.

I'll assume you don't have a floppy drive for your PC. WakePup only comes on floppy disk, but it could do what you are thinking (see WAKEPUP 1.0 - New, alternate Puppy boot floppy released). WakeUSB is specially made for booting Puppy from USB flash drives, but it does come on CD as well as floppy and your could use the built-in editor to change the default flash drive settings (remove PSLEEP=25, set PHOME=hda1 and PFILE=pup001-none-262144).

Hmm, what would keep this from working though is that WakeUSB specifically looks for a PUPXUSB marker file on the USB device so it will know which drive to boot from...

Back to WakePup - it will let you boot Puppy from a USB connected CD-ROM. I know because I have tested that combination, but like I said I've just provided it on floppy. I think the easiest solution would be to burn the WakePup floppy image to CD (so it will boot from CD). I believe someone on the forum has already done that although I couldn't find the post. If you need help with making a CD from WakePup, let me know and I will do it for you. Let me know either way how it goes :)

wassadude
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#9 Post by wassadude »

Hi tested the WakeUSB today (Floppy image) and I get an Error - it gets to the stage of saying

'ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.20'

then alot of output - then the last thing is says is

'Installed ASPI manager.'

then the error of

'Bad or missin Command Interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256'


System trying it on is Libtretto 100ct - it has the full docking station with a single USB port. It a flash card reader plugged in and seems to recognise there is a SD card plugged into the flash card reader in that the little access light flashes as it scans it.

I am not trying to install Puppy just yet - actualy seeing if I can do an install of Fedora by using this to boot into the ISO image of the install that is on a flash card - but at present I am not sure it is even getting to the USB drive to look at any images that are present.

Any ideas?

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pakt
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#10 Post by pakt »

wassadude wrote: 'Bad or missin Command Interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256'
You may have some corrupt files on the floppy you created. Try putting WakeUSB on another floppy and see if that helps.

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pakt
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Re: Does not work :(

#11 Post by pakt »

PeterSieg wrote:Hi pakt.
Tried 128M Rundisk + 256M Fundisk (MP3 Player). Both are not
recognized/found :(
Peter, something I just though of. You might try re-formatting your USB drives (FAT 16) and see if that makes any difference. (If the USB driver cannot recognize the file system on the USB drive, you will get that message too.)

Let me know if it works.

eaymon

you da man!!!!

#12 Post by eaymon »

been trying to install linux on my lovely lil b110 lifebook(tried ubuntu half a day to load!)

finally got through the usb issues with my pny reader ( dont use microdrives!)
thanks dude it reads it all from the usb just have problems with installation now... lovely!

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sunburnt
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DOS boot floppy

#13 Post by sunburnt »

I've had excellent luck makeing DOS floppys that boot a USB flash drive.
It's worked on every PC I've tried it on & 2 PCI USB cards, & booted many OSs.

I don't know if your boot disk is Linux or DOS, but the floppy OS probably doesn't matter.

I just got 3 versions of Puppy booting on my Fat32 HD, from a DOS menu.
One or more Puppys on a USB pen drive could be booted from a floppy.

If you want me to tell you how, or want help, or me to make one, say so.

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pakt
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Re: DOS boot floppy

#14 Post by pakt »

sunburnt wrote:I've had excellent luck makeing DOS floppys that boot a USB flash drive.
It's worked on every PC I've tried it on & 2 PCI USB cards, & booted many OSs.
Thanks for the info, sunburnt. The key seems to be the DOS driver that's used. The best one I've found so far is USBASPI.SYS, Panasonic's v2.20 "ASPI manager for USB mass storage". It also seems to depend on the brand of USB flash drive used. I've got three brands and only the Sandisk cruzer mini works on my old Thinkpad from 2000. What DOS driver do you use?

sunburnt wrote:I don't know if your boot disk is Linux or DOS, but the floppy OS probably doesn't matter.
I'm using FreeDOS, doing my best to use only open source tools. The drivers are the exceptions in WakeUSB.
sunburnt wrote:I just got 3 versions of Puppy booting on my Fat32 HD, from a DOS menu.
One or more Puppys on a USB pen drive could be booted from a floppy.

If you want me to tell you how, or want help, or me to make one, say so.
Thanks, I saw your other post with the zip file. I've downloaded it and will check it out.

There have been many questions on the forum on how to boot Puppy from a flash drive if a PC doesn't have BIOS support for booting from USB. WakeUSB is my attempt to help those users, but it has its limitations. It would be great if you could come up with a better tool :)

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sunburnt
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#15 Post by sunburnt »

Yep, my general purpose boot disk uses:

DeviceHigh=A:\UsbAspi.sys /w /v
DeviceHigh=A:\Di1000dd.sys

It's odd that the SanDisk worked, it's the only one I couldn't get to work.
I've seen a lot of forum posts about it not working from BIOS.
Starting from floppy is a different matter though, different drivers.
Most other brands seem to boot from BIOS ok, the 3-4 that I tried worked.
All of them also worked from my boot disk every time.

The only improvement over this setup would be a Linux boot disk (MAYBE).
I'll look at what disks I can find on the web & maybe it'll work better.

pakt::: What problems are being reported, just the driver not finding the USB?

kethd
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#16 Post by kethd »

wassadude wrote:Hi tested the WakeUSB today (Floppy image) and I get an Error - it gets to the stage of saying

'ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.20'

then alot of output - then the last thing is says is

'Installed ASPI manager.'

then the error of

'Bad or missin Command Interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256'
<snip>
Any ideas?
I think I experienced that msg in my experiments. I think it means that FreeDOS has switched from processing the original boot floppy to another device, and is not finding what it expects, and thus crashing.
You can experience this by attaching a USB floppy drive. WakeUSB will discover the USB floppy and switch to it. In most cases this will cause a crash. But if you put a copy of the boot floppy in that drive, it will just continue processing!
Unfortunately, the USB floppy becomes A:, and the original boot drive disappears. Too bad. If this could get both drives working at once, it might have some use.

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pakt
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#17 Post by pakt »

kethd wrote:
wassadude wrote:Hi tested the WakeUSB today (Floppy image) and I get an Error - it gets to the stage of saying

'ASPI Manager for USB mass-storage Version 2.20'

then alot of output - then the last thing is says is

'Installed ASPI manager.'

then the error of

'Bad or missin Command Interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256'
<snip>
Any ideas?
I think I experienced that msg in my experiments. I think it means that FreeDOS has switched from processing the original boot floppy to another device, and is not finding what it expects, and thus crashing.
You can experience this by attaching a USB floppy drive. WakeUSB will discover the USB floppy and switch to it. In most cases this will cause a crash. But if you put a copy of the boot floppy in that drive, it will just continue processing!
Unfortunately, the USB floppy becomes A:, and the original boot drive disappears. Too bad. If this could get both drives working at once, it might have some use.
Hmm, that's interesting. Perhaps you could try this: there is a switch you can add to the USBASPI driver ( /w ) that allows you to switch the USB devices. It will pause to let you remove the USB floppy, then connect a Puppy USB flash drive instead and just press enter to continue.

Let us know if it works :)

kethd
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some extended experiences trying WakeUSB

#18 Post by kethd »

See this for some extended experiences trying WakeUSB:
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=3991
Post subject: WakeUSB report - some partial success

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