[rescue] What to do with those USB "pen" drives...

N.Miller vraptor at promessage.com
Wed Aug 6 23:45:42 CDT 2003


On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 08:16 PM, Mike Hebel wrote:
> In theory, I have yet to try this, you could boot a Mac and some PCs 
> from "removable media".  On Macs you should be able to install OS 9 on 
> a 256M flash drive and designate it the startup disk.  I'll have to 
> check into this just out of curiosity.  Not sure how USB booting would 
> affect boot speed though.

Another common practice was to put a copy of the system files
onto a PCMCIA Flash drive in older Powerbooks to increase
battery life.  I don't know if you could boot from them though.
I should check that with the Pismo before I sell it--I have a
128MB Compact Flash w/PCMCIA adaptor that don't have any pictures
on at the moment.

If you test it, post your results.  That would be a cool tool
for doing file system diags in Macs that can still boot OS 9.

As an aside, I read today that Lexar is coming out with a 4GB
flash card for high end digital photographers.  This will require
a change in the standard for digital camera file systems.
Apparently they all currently use FAT16, but since the 4GB
will theoretically hold up to 45,000 JPEGs, FAT32 will be
required.

=Nadine=



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