# Linux OS specifications



## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

Has anyone know if RUNT-5.0.zip designed for the bootable setting of USB-ZIP in BIOS? If not, I have to extract it and try


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

BTW my desktop BIOS is Phoenix-AwardBIOS V6.00PG and motherboard is 661FX/648FX4MR-ES from FOXCONN

Unfortunately, I can either find the relevant documentation from their site nor from Phoenix site and I have no idea what the USB-ZIP in BIOS is for

From my guess, it could be for a zip drive but who knows it may be for zip file. What do you guys reckon?


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

If this is what you're referring to, http://runt.mybox.org/, then you just extract the zip file like you would with any zip file and copy the contents to a USB flash drive. As long as your BIOS can support booting from a USB device, it will work. Most newer computers will allow this.


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

I have tried both flash drive in USB mode and laptop HDD direct boot on my desktop without success


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

IT people have an excellent creative mind to invent all sorts of devices but can barely manage them well.

Why don't IT people learn all the management skills from automobil people who are able to integrate old car parts with new ones very well. There are lots of example of which old car frames equiptted with new facilities without any problems.

The stupid designs in the BIOS of my desktop have USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-HDD and USB-CD which are too specific and have limited their application. If I'm the BIOS programmer, I would just write USB-1, USB-2, USB-3 etc and let POSIX API or OS to write the adapter drives to recognise USB prot. so do to IDE port.

The automobil industry can survive with live integration new/old parts with one another is that their keeping up automobil standardization internationally.

Automobil parts management is very similar to device management and the skill is not difficult to learn by IT people though.


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

AND, I believe not all the DIY cars consists of genuine parts


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

frustrated777 said:


> IT people have an excellent creative mind to invent all sorts of devices but can barely manage them well.
> 
> Why don't IT people learn all the management skills from automobil people who are able to integrate old car parts with new ones very well. There are lots of example of which old car frames equiptted with new facilities without any problems.
> 
> ...


This is already happening. Floppy drives are old technology and computers work with them without problems. Same with CD and DVD drives. Your motherboard is probably an ATX motherboard which has been around for years. Booting from USB devices is still relatively new. Even the BIOS has been around a very long time. 

Also, you need to keep in mind that the BIOS is very limited, both in scope as well as in how large it can be. It's main purpose is to get the hardware going and to locate the boot manager, then pass control over to the boot manager. After that, it doesn't really do a whole lot. There's an extremely small amount of storage space available for a BIOS. It was never meant to be large or to do everything.


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## Geekgirl (Jan 1, 2005)

What are you trying to do , boot to a usb device? I believe USB_ZIP would be to boot from a zip drive. As Skie stated,


> If this is what you're referring to, http://runt.mybox.org/, then you just extract the zip file like you would with any zip file and copy the contents to a USB flash drive. As long as your BIOS can support booting from a USB device, it will work. Most newer computers will allow this.


This would be the proper proceedure. If you cannot boot to the USB device then your motherboard does not support the feature.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

frustrated777 said:


> The stupid designs in the BIOS of my desktop have USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-HDD and USB-CD which are too specific and have limited their application. If I'm the BIOS programmer, I would just write USB-1, USB-2, USB-3 etc and let POSIX API or OS to write the adapter drives to recognise USB prot. so do to IDE port.


Lucky you're not the designer of your BIOS or we wouldn't know what your mobo is capable of ..

USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-HDD and USB-CD refer to *F*loppy *D*isk *D*rive, *H*ard *D*isk *D*rive, *ZIP* Drive & *C*ompact *D*isk drive respectively which should allow you to access files via USB access. your annotation by number refers to the physical position or USB port number .. and gives no idea of functions

The first thing that you need to do when trying to boot from a USB device at power on is to set USB LEGACY DEVICES to ENABLED in BIOS.

Have you tried this , done this ??

Your motherboard description is confusing since the 661FX chipset is used by many manufacturers whilst I cn find no trace of 661FX/648FX4MR-ES on Foxconn motherboard site although there is a listing for the 661FX. It would appear to be a recent Intel CPU Motherboard which SHOULD support boot from USB


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## TriggerFinger (Jan 30, 2008)

speaking of booting from USB ports.. does this include USB ports on PCMCIA cards on laptops? some laptops have pcmcia slots where you can put USB pcmcia card but i do not know if this is recognized in bios as a USB port that it can boot from.


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

Hi TriggerFinger,

Didn't you see my post about a PCMCIA-USB problem on the other day?


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

Done_Fishin said:


> The first thing that you need to do when trying to boot from a USB device at power on is to set USB LEGACY DEVICES to ENABLED in BIOS.
> 
> Have you tried this , done this ??


I have no problem with booting Knoppix 5.01 from USB-CD setting in BIOS. What is mean by USB LEGACY DEVICES, mate?


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

frustrated777 said:


> I have no problem with booting Knoppix 5.01 from USB-CD setting in BIOS.


so you are able to boot from a USB device 




frustrated777 said:


> What is mean by USB LEGACY DEVICES, mate?


USB legacy devices are devices that are recognised by BIOS at boot time like mouse, keyboard , FDD, HDD, CD/DVD that have been placed on a USB port .. 

I am assuming that, since you can boot via USB-CD (that's a CD ROM drive hung on a USB port with a bootable CD inside) that your system is set as USB legacy enabled.

IF your USB-ZIP drive isn't functioning .. I would suggest that you check to see if there is some special boot loader required that needs to be INSTALLED ..

just like bootable CD's, HDD's & Floppies .. the system needs a command that tells it to load a file and run it in order to boot from a particular device. If that code is missing the BIOS will ignore the device and look for the next device in the BOOT list that has the proper code .. In Linux talk, I believe that means it requires a grub link to the device that needs to be booted .. and the correct code ON THE DEVICE after that in order to boot

I am still highly confused though with your opening question and I am stoill wondering what you really want to know ???



frustrated777 said:


> Has anyone know if RUNT-5.0.zip designed for the bootable setting of USB-ZIP in BIOS? If not, I have to extract it and try


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

frustrated777 said:


> IT people have an excellent creative mind to invent all sorts of devices but can barely manage them well.
> 
> Why don't IT people learn all the management skills from automobil people who are able to integrate old car parts with new ones very well. There are lots of example of which old car frames equiptted with new facilities without any problems.
> 
> ...


I'm going to guess you have never worked in the automotive industry. I do and there is no real standardization of parts. It's called being lazy and cutting costs. They make old parts work because they don't want to spend the money to redesign. The electronic industry on the other hand tries to move to new technology which is why it doesn't take long for older stuff to not work with new stuff. My computer is a couple of years old, and I'm not sure if it supports USB booting. I know that my Mac doesn't, but it does on Firewire. But that is because it is also an older Mac without built-in USB2. Newer macs will boot USB.


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

TriggerFinger said:


> speaking of booting from USB ports.. does this include USB ports on PCMCIA cards on laptops? some laptops have pcmcia slots where you can put USB pcmcia card but i do not know if this is recognized in bios as a USB port that it can boot from.


Well, PCMCIA is usually referring to laptop computers. Desktop computer just use PC card and I have not seen any desktop PC which contains PCMCIA slot on the CASE so far. If PCMCIA is not working for booting purpose, mean it in the specification so that users will not confuse with it. Specificaiton is like a statutory document for people to follow up exactly. Of course, a document could never be perfect, but could be made it perfect by reviewing, revising. Do you agree?


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

Done_Fishin said:


> so you are able to boot from a USB device


Only on my desktop, not my TE2000 of which there is no BIOS setting for USB-CD but a USB-FDD instead.



Done_Fishin said:


> IF your USB-ZIP drive isn't functioning .. I would suggest that you check to see if there is some special boot loader required that needs to be INSTALLED ..
> 
> just like bootable CD's, HDD's & Floppies .. the system needs a command that tells it to load a file and run it in order to boot from a particular device. If that code is missing the BIOS will ignore the device and look for the next device in the BOOT list that has the proper code .. In Linux talk, I believe that means it requires a grub link to the device that needs to be booted .. and the correct code ON THE DEVICE after that in order to boot


That is a kind of instruction supposed to be appearing in the linux downloaded file with the documentation enclosed, isn't it?

Just have a look at their website again. It seems that the package does not have a function of plug-and-play auto boot and needs human intervention to some sort of degree. If this is the case, then readme doc should always be attached to the downloaded file, shouldn't it. USABILITY, INTEGRITY and SUSTANABILITY are three keys for successful software distribution


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## frustrated777 (Mar 22, 2008)

sinclair_tm said:


> I'm going to guess you have never worked in the automotive industry. I do and there is no real standardization of parts. It's called being lazy and cutting costs. They make old parts work because they don't want to spend the money to redesign. The electronic industry on the other hand tries to move to new technology which is why it doesn't take long for older stuff to not work with new stuff. My computer is a couple of years old, and I'm not sure if it supports USB booting. I know that my Mac doesn't, but it does on Firewire. But that is because it is also an older Mac without built-in USB2. Newer macs will boot USB.


If the product have a life cycle, then mean it some where users can catch up easily

This kind of approach Nero does it very well

http://www.nero.com/ena/downloads-nero8-trial.php


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Can we get back on track to figure out what your problem is here, apart from criticising the manufacturer of your system for using/creating a motherboard that doesn't fulfill your requirements but *probably* fulfills the criteria for the functions that were advertised at the time that it was manufactured!

WHAT did you mean by your original question, What are you expecting people to answer questions about ? 




frustrated777 said:


> Has anyone know if RUNT-5.0.zip designed for the bootable setting of USB-ZIP in BIOS? If not, I have to extract it and try





frustrated777 said:


> Just have a look at their website again. *It seems that the package does not have a function of plug-and-play auto boot* and needs human intervention to some sort of degree.


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

frustrated777 said:


> Well, PCMCIA is usually referring to laptop computers. Desktop computer just use PC card and I have not seen any desktop PC which contains PCMCIA slot on the CASE so far. If PCMCIA is not working for booting purpose, mean it in the specification so that users will not confuse with it. Specificaiton is like a statutory document for people to follow up exactly. Of course, a document could never be perfect, but could be made it perfect by reviewing, revising. Do you agree?


PCMCIA is the official name for the technology. However, it's also difficult to say and some what of a tonuge twister. PC Card is just another name for PCMCIA that's easier to say. It makes no difference if this tech is used in a laptop or in a desktop, the name is the same, but they can both be used. Also, PCMCIA is available on desktops, although it's not very common. All you need is a PCI card to be installed. But, there's very little need to have PCMCIA on a desktop since most of the reasons for using a PCMCIA card is already available on a desktop.

As far as any specification, I'm pretty sure that the PCMCIA spec already describes what the tech should do. However, I doubt it describes what it should *not* do. There are so many things it can't do, that's it's pointless to list them all.


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

frustrated777 said:


> That is a kind of instruction supposed to be appearing in the linux downloaded file with the documentation enclosed, isn't it?
> 
> Just have a look at their website again. It seems that the package does not have a function of plug-and-play auto boot and needs human intervention to some sort of degree. If this is the case, then readme doc should always be attached to the downloaded file, shouldn't it. USABILITY, INTEGRITY and SUSTANABILITY are three keys for successful software distribution


No, this type of thing is not supposed to be in the documentation. There are so many computer configurations that it's almost impossible to document all configuration changes that need to be made. Most Linux distro's are are volunteer based while a few are supported by small companies. Those that are volunteer based have limited time and resources to document such things.

I'm not sure what your idea of "plug and play auto boot" is, but up until now, I've never heard of "auto boot". Plug and play has more to do with how the OS handles new hardware then with how the BIOS determines how to begin the initial bootup of the computer. 



frustrated777 said:


> If the product have a life cycle, then mean it some where users can catch up easily
> 
> This kind of approach Nero does it very well
> 
> http://www.nero.com/ena/downloads-nero8-trial.php


Not every product has a determined life cycle. For some, the life cycle lasts only as long as the product is used or is popular. Once newer tech is introduced, then the old is replaced, but those that still have the old tech still use it, so the old tech is not dead. It took 10 years to try to replace the Floppy drive and it's still in use by certain people, so it'll unfortunately be with us for at least another 5 to 10.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Skie said:


> It took 10 years to try to replace the Floppy drive and it's still in use by certain people, so it'll unfortunately be with us for at least another 5 to 10.


If you took away my floppy drive I wouldn't know what to do with the mountain of floppy bootable diagnostics disks in my possession .. lucky some progs are available on UBCD (Linux distro ONLY & NOT UBCD4WIN) but as yet haven't figured out how to add progs in there .. never mind nothing is perfect .. have to make do with what we have or change it to something that does do what we want!


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