unable to boot with PCMCIA Flash card on IBM T30 laptop

[TSV]

Hi,

I have IBM T30 laptop with 512MB RAM, Pentium 4 M processor running WinXP Prof. I have 64M TDK Flash Card that can go into one of the two PCMCIA slots in the laptop. 'E' is the drive letter of Flash Card.

I copied the extracted files from .iso file of puppy linux (puppy-1.0.1-opera-128ram.iso) in the Flash Card ('E:\'). Then from kernel.org copied syslinux for win32 and executed "syslinux e:". A file with ldlinux.sys got created.

Now, Files in the Flash Card (E:\) are:

BOOT.CAT IMAGE.GZ ISOLINUX.CFG ldlinux.sys syslinux.exe
BOOTMSG.TXT ISOLINUX.BIN VMLINUZ syslinux.cfg.

Boot media options presented in BIOS while rebooting: Removable media, CDROM, HDD, Network.

When I choose the removable media (which corresponds to Flash Card that is inserted, I presume), WinXP from HDD is loaded after a shortwile, after failing to boot from Flash Card (no message is output by the system like, the particular boot media is failed or does not have a loader etc).

I can burn the iso onto a CDROM and boot from it. I do not have CDRW drive at the moment. Additionally as Barry puts it, having an OS and the data on one rewritable and removable media fitting in shirt pocket is great.

Any inputs/comments will be of great help.

Thanks and Regards,
-vishnu

[Guest]

I don't know... we have trouble with some PCMCIA cards as it is, but *booting* from PCMCIA, that I have no idea about.
It would be surprising if the laptop BIOS supports such a mode of booting?...

[TSV]

Thanks Barry, for such a quick reply. I will look into this further and if I could get any details, will definitely let the forum know.

Regards,
-vishnu