Boot with 1.44" Floppy, then net install from thumb drive?

[Doug]

On 01/02/2013 08:49 AM, T.C. Hollingsworth wrote:
> On 1/2/13, M de Luis <gimme_the_giffs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> When I copied the Net installation iso of Fedora to my USB flash drive using
>> the Fedora LiveUSB creator, I noticed that the pre-existing FAT32 filesystem
>> on the thumb drive had been unaltered, and that DOS readable files for the
>> live image and Network installation had been added in 4-new directories.
>> Presumably some sort of boot loader, that is able to read the FAT32
>> filesystem files, was added to the boot sector region of the flash drive. As
>> soon as I am able to recreate this mystery boot loader's installation
>> process for a FAT32 formatted IDE drive, then the problem is licked. It's no
>> effort to boot the laptop from a Windows98 rescue disk using the floppy
>> drive, create a temporarily bootable DOS partition for the Net installation
>> files, and then given the bios' legacy USB support will allow, merely copy
>> the appropriate installation directories and files from the thumb drive to
>> the hard disk. Install the boot loader, and away you go.
>>
>> Okay, so who can tell me which bootloader is written into a thumb drive's
>> boot sector, when the Fedora LiveUSB Creator tool prepares a USB flash drive
>> using one of the installation iso images?
> The bootloader is called SYSLINUX: http://www.syslinux.org/
> IThey include DOS binaries.
>
> Unfortunately, the copy of DOS included on the Windows 98 boot disk
> does not have a USB mass storage driver (or any sort of USB driver for
> that matter), though you might have some luck with this stuff:
> http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
>
> That being said, the easiest solution IMHO is to plug its hard drive
> into a different machine and do the install there.
>
> --T.C.
That would probably *not* be a good idea, unless the other machine is
identical.  The install process customizes the system to fit the hardware
it finds--video, sound, hard drive controller, Ethernet chip, etc.
It's very likely that when you moved the drive back to your original
machine, nothing would work.

--doug