Hi,

I have a DVD with Navigatrix on it and my Siemens Amilo (with windows xp installation) is able to boot from that.
It will not boot from a stick though as the Siemens does not have that option.

Still here is the main issue the Siemens is not the boat computer, which is instead an old Compaq Armada M700.
The Armada does not boot from the DVD.

Now I thought, hey, lets put the Navigatrix CD content on a stick (16Gb) and put Plop also on it, so that the Armada can boot from there.
The Armada can not boot from a USB normally.

Unfortunately I can not figure out how to do that (I am a windows user (=not administrator or programmer) so far and have no linux experience).

Can you suggest how I could do it?

Many thanks!

Hi,

many thanks.
There is the issue that the Armada has no operating system installed currently.
Guess I have to throw Windows on it, than install Navigatrix and then get rid of Windows again?
Otherwise I have trouble with moving the files.

I hoped to have only a small operating system on the Armada, as it is an older machine...

Lets see if I have success, I'll try it tonight.

Franzi

If the Armada doesn't doesn't boot from a DVD and doesn't boot from a USB....how do you "throw Windows on it"?

Funny enough it boots from a Puppy Linux CD & might do the same from a Windows CD.
It can not boot from the Navigatrix DVD though.
The Siemens can boot from it...

Maybe it is an issue with that Navigatrix is on a DVD. Still, it does not fit on a CD so I had to use one.

Here is an easy way...

Burn the attached ISO to a CD and boot the computer from this CD with the Navigatrix USB connected.

Hi,

was the whole day with tank & making a data cable for laptop, vhf, gps, navtex, depth....

Did not buy the CD's. First thing in the morning

Thanks a lot, time for a nap now, its 01.00AM now.

David your a champ.

That is going straight into the toolbox.

Awesome,

now its booting Navigatrix on the Armada (Navigatrix is on the stick, your bootloader on the CD.)

Seems to be stuck on the Mantaray for now though.... or it is reeeeally slow
Got a blue screen with the Manta for several minutes...

Next questions, how do I prevent the installation from beeing stuck?
How do I make the stick bootable without the CD?

Many thanks for your help so far, I I ever make it into your area (where are you located), you earned yourself some beers

Cheerio,

Franzi

Plan A
It's definetly stuck on the blue Manta screen. Can that be avoided?


Plan B
As I have one 800MB CD and a 700MB RW CD here, is there a way to load a stripped down Navigatrix ISO on any of these, install it from there on the HDD and then load the missing files in a second step?

Looking forward to your thoughts..

When you first see the blue screen repeatedly hit <esc> until the screen turns black and stays black.

In the upper left corner you will see boot:

Enter:

fix

and then <enter>

This will recreate the persistent files and hopefully fix any problem that exists. It will take 5-10 minutes.

After this, if it still hangs, repeat the process above, but enter old in place of fix. This calls up a set of drivers geared for older machines.

Give that a whirl.

Hey gooood mornin'

Well, tried it.

"Fix" leads to a blinking cursor & idling CD drive.

"Old" leads to the same, but displays:
Loading /casper/vmlinuz....
Loading /casper/initrd.gz......
&
a blinking cursor too.

Lets see what is going on in the next hour.

Hmmm, what next? Hope we are not running out of options.

At least we are a tiny step further.

Thanks again!

Hmm. The CD drive stopped spinning & nothing changed after approx 20 minutes waiting ;-(

...and the stick still works in your other machine?

Well the other machine does not like the combination of stick & boot CD, but starts from a burned ISO DVD of Navigatrix flawlessly.

The 16GB stick in itself is ok I can use it under Windows.

I made it with the "Create a copy for a friend" function when Navigatrix was running on the Siemens.

Any thoughts?

This was not a check of the BootManager.iso and the stick...this was a check to verify the integrity of the data on the stick.

Booting into a machine that you know it boots to is the cheap way of testing that the stick is ok.

Oh, yeah...the other machine doesn't boot from USB, right?

Rereading the posts, and your situation, I'm questioning the integrity of the stick.

Hmm. I created it yesterday with the "Make a copy for a friend" function and removed it when the screen turned green.

The Siemens does not like booting from USB, but does not need to.

Any more ideas?

And the Siemens chokes on the BootManager/stick combo?

The Siemens does. Right after Plop is through I get a black screen with flashing cursor.

The Armada gets (after "old") to the blinking cursor after the two lines mentioned in the post above above.

It looks like you have an error in the creation of the stick.

I'll be back in a few minutes with instruction how to test.

Perfect!