How can I create a flash USB RT boot device?

[Daniel_Chile]

Hi. I have a PXI 8174 controller and I know it's not supposed to run RT because it doesn't have a floppy drive. However I know that 8171 controllers can be set up to boot from an USB flash device.

My question is, how can I make an RT-boot flash device? In MAX it seems easy to build a RT-boot floppy drive, but I don't have a floppy drive by now. I tryed inserting my USB flash device and changing its letter to "A:", but MAX doesn't seem to recognize it as a floppy.

An alternative could be to boot from an USB CDROM, but the same problem arises: how to build the RT-boot CD.

I really need this controller to run LV-RT.

Thank you

Daniel R.

PD: I'm using LV-RT 7.1.1

[JamesC]

Hi Daniel,

There are ways of booting from a USB flash drive, but it is a bit hit and miss. Please look at the following link.

Please make sure you follow these Requirements
Basically your controller needs to be in FAT32 format, and RT needs to install to the first partition.

Hope this helps you
Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Daniel_Chile]

Hi, James, thank you for your post.

I have done some tests and yes, the controller supports booting from USB device.

The problem is how to make the flash disk RT-bootable. I've come to create a RT-boot floppy, copy the contents to the USB device and transfer the boot sector from the floppy to the USB device, but it didn't work out. I even edited the boot sector but nothing.

In this point I gave out because I spent too much time, but I think that there's still a little hope of making it work.

Now I wander if I plug an USB floppy drive (I suppose it exists) and boot from a floppy disk would work. But I really don't know.

Any comments appreciated.

Please excuse my english.

Daniel R.

[JamesC]

Hi Daniel,

Please refer back to Step 2 in the Link in my first post. This gives you the location of a Flash tool from HP that will make your Flash drive bootable.
Then make sure in the BIOS of your 8176 controller that USB device is the first boot option.

You can get USB floppy drives and that is the method we use in the UK office to make 8176s, 86s, and 96s boot into RT.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Daniel_Chile]

The HP utility can be used to make a DOS Startup Disk. Must I assume that it can also be used to make an RT Startup Disk, using the RT-boot floppy as a source?

Regards,

Daniel

[JamesC]

Hi Daniel,

The easiest way for you to boot in to RT would be to get a USB floppy drive.
There is a way to boot from a Flash key, but I do not have the DOSBOOT utility required by Pharlap ETS to boot from a DOS window.
I also can not seem to get a hold of it.

Sorry for giving you the wrong idea at the beginning of this thread.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Daniel_Chile]

Hi, James. Don't worry. As I said :"any comments appreciated".

About the HP utility, I tried to make the flash disk bootable using the RT-boot floppy as a source, but it said something like "not a valid DOS-boot device".

I also think that the usb floppy device should be the easiest way (if it works for 8174, of course), but I don't have one at the moment. I also don't know if the floppy device has some requeriment to be recognized.

About that DOSBOOT utility, what's the exact purpose of it?

Thank you

Daniel R.

[JamesC]

Hi Daniel,

The DOSBOOT utility is a executable that will allow the RT boot.exe to run from a DOS prompt.
If we had this we could make a bootable Flash device using the HP utility and then add the RT boot files, but we would first need to run DOSBOOT

The 8174 should work with a USB floppy as it allows USB boot devices.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Cyrille_D.]

Follow this link: https://support.ardence.com/patches/patch_list.asp?vid=1
You may find a patch containing dosboot.exe that would load a monitor file.

I thought that would solve the problem ... but not.

Cyrille

[Paul M.]

Cyrille,

I don't quite understand your message, is that utility supposed to create a dos boot disk out of a USB drive? 

Here is our recommended method for creating USB boot disks:
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/D3AD6D3474D09C5E86256E130079C1B0?OpenDocument