Making Boot CD's and USB Flash Drives

Below are instructions in making boot diskettes, CD's and USB flash drives. We include booting in DOS and linux (pclinuxos) on the different media. All the methods were taught to me by Andrew Avila, a Cal Poly Pomona Biotech major.

Making a DOS bootable diskette
This is very easy. The site www.bootdisk.com has a number of nice DOS bootdisk options. I like to use the program boot98c: boot98c.exe. It has some useful utilities.
1. Place a blank diskette in the disk drive (A:)
2. Run boot98c.exe in windows and follow the instructions for making a bootable diskette.

Making a DOS bootable CD
This is also quite easy. I like to use the Nero CD burning utility.
1. Make a DOS bootable diskette as described above.
2. Place the bootable diskette in A drive. If you don't have a diskette drive, use a USB diskette drive.
3. Follow the menu to make a DOS boot CD.

Making a DOS bootable USB Flash Drive
This is also quite easy. I use the HP Utilities program HP20306. This is an older version (only 1.9 M) that works great. It is a free download from HP: SP27213.exe. It runs in windows.
1. Make a DOS bootable diskette as described above, or you can extract boot98c.exe to a directory with winimage.
2. Place the bootable diskette in A drive, and a flash drive in a USB slot. If you don't have a diskette drive, use a USB diskette drive.
3. Run the HP utility and follow the menu. Only command.com (hidden) will be copied onto the flash memory stick. Be sure to check mark "create a Dos startup disk" and select A: or a folder with the Dos files.
4. Copy any DOS software you want onto the memory stick. I usually copy all the files on the boot diskette.

Making a Linux bootable CD (pclinuxos)
pclinuxos is a nice distribution for making a bootable CD.
1. Customize your pclinuxos distribution: install and uninstall the applications you want using synaptic..
2. Run mklivecd and an ISO image of your distribution will be produced. (for example: mklivecd mydistro.iso)
3. Run a CD burning utility and burn the *.iso onto the CD.

Making a linux bootable Flash Drive
pclinuxos is a nice distribution for making a bootable flash drive.
1. First make a DOS bootable USB flash drive.
2. Customize your pclinux distribution: install and uninstall the applications you want using synaptic.
3. Run mklivecd and an ISO image of your distribution will be produced. (for example: mklivecd mydistro.iso
4. Run an iso extracting program (e.g. winrar), and extract the contents of the ISO into a folder.
5. Copy everything onto the root drive of the flash drive. You must have at least: livecd.sqts, vmlinuz, and initrd.gz
6. Copy the file "loadlin" onto the root drive of the flash drive. Download a version from the web, or try loadlin.exe.

To boot up in Linux, first boot the USB flash drive into DOS. Then, type: loadlin vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz
If you have problems getting into KDE windows, do the following:
a) type: X -Configure
b) type: mv xorg.new.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
c) type: startx

Making a linux bootable USB Flash Drive for Asus EEEBOOK X206HA-FD0050TS / 11,6" HD-Display / Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor
1. This Asus netbook is a nice light netbook with a long battery life (8 hours). The most compatible linux distribution for this netbook is Xubuntu (latest version). We installed Xubuntu16(64 bit) on my netbook, and it works great (except for sound).
2. To make a boot USB, start by making a boot USB for a laptop. Be sure to use the 64 bit Xubuntu distribution, since we could not get the 32 bit to run.
3. Then copy the file bootia32.efi into the directory efi/boot on the flash drive. The UEFI loader for this processor can only load 32 bit efi, but the processor only works with the 64 bit distribution.
4. Many thanks to whoever wrote the bootia32.efi file and figured this out.
5. For sound buy a usb sound card emulator.

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