Booting VIA EPIA PX Mainboard from USB

The Embedded Systems Conference gave away ARTiGO Pico-ITX PCs this year 
to "full" attendees.  I was pleasantly surprised to get it -- usually 
speakers don't get the full range of freebies.

At any rate, I have this thing with Windows CE installed on it, but what 
_I_ really want is to get more milage with Linux.  Since this is a spare 
time project I'm trying to do this while spending no more than ten times 
the purchase price of the PC -- and 0 * 10 = 0.

I've got a copy of Damn Small Linux on a bootable memory stick, and I've 
tested it on one of my laptops and it works -- but it doesn't work on the 
ARTiGO machine.  If worse comes to worst I can slap the thing's hard 
drive into a laptop and install a linux distro on it, then put it back 
into the ARTiGO machine, but I'd rather be able to boot off a stick if I 
can.

Does anyone out there know how to induce a VIA EPIA PX mainboard to boot 
from a memory stick?  It's bios gives one several boot choices including 
USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, and USB-CD, but either none of these work with a stick 
or I'm not fondling the thing quite right, because I'm not getting it to 
boot.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Tim Wescott
Control systems and communications consulting
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott
Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:12:03 -0500, Tim Wescott wrote:

> The Embedded Systems Conference gave away ARTiGO Pico-ITX PCs this year
> to "full" attendees.  I was pleasantly surprised to get it -- usually
> speakers don't get the full range of freebies.
> 
> At any rate, I have this thing with Windows CE installed on it, but what
> _I_ really want is to get more milage with Linux.  Since this is a spare
> time project I'm trying to do this while spending no more than ten times
> the purchase price of the PC -- and 0 * 10 = 0.
> 
> I've got a copy of Damn Small Linux on a bootable memory stick, and I've
> tested it on one of my laptops and it works -- but it doesn't work on
> the ARTiGO machine.  If worse comes to worst I can slap the thing's hard
> drive into a laptop and install a linux distro on it, then put it back
> into the ARTiGO machine, but I'd rather be able to boot off a stick if I
> can.
> 
> Does anyone out there know how to induce a VIA EPIA PX mainboard to boot
> from a memory stick?  It's bios gives one several boot choices including
> USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, and USB-CD, but either none of these work with a stick
> or I'm not fondling the thing quite right, because I'm not getting it to
> boot.
> 
> Thanks in advance.

Never mind -- the answer is that you have to go into BIOS (using delete, 
_not_ escape), and tell that the _hard drive_ that you want to boot from 
is the USB port.

I find it interesting that it treats CD drives, USB CD, USB FDD, USB ZIP 
and others as distinct entities, yet a thumb drive is just another flavor 
of hard drive.

Oh well -- you learn something new every day.

-- 
Tim Wescott
Control systems and communications consulting
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott
Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html