Bootable CD drive - how to tell?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ablang
  • Start date Start date
A

Ablang

Is there a list of bootable CD drives out there? How can you
tell if yours is bootable, besides trying to install Windows off the
CD and risking it not working w/o a floppy boot disk?


===
"In the future, my private life will be expressed solely through art."
-- Britney Spears
 
Ablang said:
Is there a list of bootable CD drives out there? How can you
tell if yours is bootable, besides trying to install Windows off the
CD and risking it not working w/o a floppy boot disk?


===
"In the future, my private life will be expressed solely through art."
-- Britney Spears
Click to expand...

sorry, I bought the only one in the world..........and its not for
sale...............well offer me a mil quid and I just might part with
it.............only cash mind.
 
all cd drives are bootable it is the motherboard that allows this feature in
the bios.
some of the real old motherboards did not have this option.
 
BigJim said:
all cd drives are bootable it is the motherboard that allows this feature in
the bios.
some of the real old motherboards did not have this option.
Click to expand...

I feel so old now; I consider "Boot from CD" a fairly new feature in
mainboards.

Jon
 
my guess is that it has been around about 5 or 6 years, maybe a bit longer.
My asus p2b has it and it is dated 98' build.
 
my guess is that it has been around about 5 or 6 years, maybe a bit longer.
My asus p2b has it and it is dated 98' build.
Click to expand...


All drives were not bootable.

That is dictated by a spec for the filesystem and the drives
had to support it in order for them to be able to boot a
disc. Within roughly the same timeframe, the board bios was
made to accomodate this capability of the drives. Ever
since the feature was added, it was considered a "standard"
feature for a drive to be able to do it, but if you hook a
very old non-supportive drive up to a new board, you'll not
be able to boot with it.

This may've happened roughly '95 or '96, though I'd sure the
industry leader at the time (Intel) had boads that could
boot from such supportive drives in '97 if not earlier.
 
All drives were not bootable.
That is dictated by a spec for the filesystem and the drives
had to support it in order for them to be able to boot a
disc. Within roughly the same timeframe, the board bios was
made to accomodate this capability of the drives. Ever
since the feature was added, it was considered a "standard"
feature for a drive to be able to do it, but if you hook a
very old non-supportive drive up to a new board, you'll not
be able to boot with it.

This may've happened roughly '95 or '96, though I'd sure the
industry leader at the time (Intel) had boads that could
boot from such supportive drives in '97 if not earlier.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I thought I was going bonkers, couldn't google any info on
the non bootable drives I knew I remembered.
 
Terry Wilson said:
Thanks.

I thought I was going bonkers, couldn't google any info on
the non bootable drives I knew I remembered.
Click to expand...

I probably have a couple of them in my "vintage" parts bin. They do exsist
when us old farts refuse to toss things to computer heaven.

Ed
 
If you just want to access the HD from the CD-boot, try a Linux Live-CD
(downloadable then burn to CD on another machine. I've had extremely
good luck with "PC LinuxOS" and have partitioned drives in many
configurations, including dual-boot with a small rescue partit. Once
partitioned, you should be able to boot with Windows or whatever OS CD
and install that OS on the selected FAT32 partition. The live-CD Linux
can either be installed or run from the CD. Only caution here is when
doing updates to Linux via net: use automatic or full-package updates.
I tried selecting only certain updates to the system and had a tough
time getting past command-line on boot.
 
Back
Top