I have just bought a Kingmax USB1.1 Flash Drive (a ‘pen drive’) that, according to the specifications can be used as a ZIP HDD boot device with WinXP and a mobo that recognises ZIP HDD as a boot device in bios.

My A7N8X deluxe mobo does support a whole range of boot device options including ZIP HDD. However, no matter what config I try (even disabling all boot devices except ZIP HDD), it won’t boot from the pen. Interestingly it still boots from HDD 0 even when I’ve disabled this in bios.

I have a friend with exactly the same board and pen drive and he can’t get it to recognise it as a zip boot device either. This is making me think this is a bug with the mobo, rather than a problem with the pen drive.

Has anyone had similar a experience or got any suggestions for other bios set ups (I’m using latest bios version for the board, by the way) ?

Huh!
Let me get this straight ... it’s a USB device (USB1.1 on a USB 2 board) that is 'supposed' to emulate a Zip drive?

Yeah right.

Nothing on page 58 helps either.

I can't see this working unless you can, as with USB mouse/keyboard, tell the system to look at the USB when/at post.

:crazy:

Addendum and update...

I misread the little booklet that came with the pen drive.:crazy:
However...it hasn't made much difference and I still have the same problem. To clarify:
The app that comes with the USB pen allows you to partition and format it as two drives.
One of the options is to create a 1.44Mb partition that it will format as a bootable USB floppy...it basically sticks all the files on from your OS as if u were creating a real boot disk in windows. This shows up in My Computer as 'Floppy Disk B'

In bios, I have ensured that i have USB 1.1 + 2.0 support enabled and have changed the boot sequence to look for a USB FDD first. When rebooting, the pen is just ignored and the system boots normally.
Even when I actually disable all devices except the USB FDD, it still boots normally...I hate it - I can't get my machine to crash!!!

Anyway, I tried deleting all the boot files on the pen's FDD partition and simply copying the contents of a WinME boot disk to the pen boot area...the WinME boot floppy was immediately detected when i put that first in the boot sequence, but when i tried the same with the pen, again the system just booted as normal.

It's just like the computer is refusing to accept that it could possibly boot from a pen drive and insists on looking for the HDD, even when i've told it not to.

Oh well...it's a bloody useful gadget anyway...perhaps there's a solution out there somewhere.

First, what files is your pen drive program putting on your fdd partition?

Second, You CANNOT just copy boot files over and expect it to boot. The boot files have to be put on a specified track. Go ahead and try it with a floppy. Show all your hidden and system files on a known good bootable floppy then copy them to another blank floppy. As long as you try you won't get it to boot. I'm guessing you need to find a better way of making your pen drive bootable. I'll let you know how exactly in a week or two, I'm getting my 2.0 1 gig pen drive next week.

I'd be really interested to learn how you get on with the USB 2.0 1gig pendrive, especially when bootable. Theoretically, could you run Win98/Linux of one of these?

C'Mon... Can't you guys remember the old DOS days? Find a boot disk that has the SYS.COM command on it, and boot up on it. Run SYS B: from the A: drive, and set the boot device to USB ZIP not USB FDD. That will make it boot to an A: prompt. If you want more added to it, etc, copy the entire contents of the floppy to it BEFORE using the SYS command (to avoid over-writing something important). I have a little generic Pingtec USB drive, and it worked like a champ. Booted Win98 bootdisk from it, no problems.