Boot From SD card reader

[cybermole]

Hi guys,

I have just find this forum and this great project that is going on, it might just be what I'm looking for!

I have a problem with a Dell Mini 9, this device has a SDHC card slot (JMicron JMB385 Card Reader)

link to the dell windows xp driver ftp.us.dell.com/chipset/R200081.EXE

But the Mini 9 has no support to boot from this device! It can boot from USB that works fine, just there is no option to boot from SD card in the BIOS.

I have been thinking of ways to get this to boot using a bootloader, so far nothing.

I have though of using a small partition on the SSD where NTLDR will be and using Ntdetect.com to detect the SD card reader and then have the boot.ini point to the SD card reader as the boot device. I dont this this will work as i'm sure your need a special type of driver!?! for the card reader.

I am know at this point, when I found PLoP, i'm not sure yet but its looking good. Could this do what I need and get the Mini 9 to boot Windows and maybe another OS  from the SD card. I don't mind having to boot from the SSD to get to a bootloader.

any help would be super, I hope I have made this clear. If not just ask..


Thanks very much

Ross

[Elmar]

hi,
i think the card reader is connected to the internal usb too, but i dont know. can you use a linux (maybe ploplinux) to boot from usb and send me some infos?

boot regards
elmar

[cybermole]

It would seem it is not connected to a USB controller? It seems to have it's own controller.

If you tell me how to get the info you want I will, I have download the Linux from your site and can boot from a USB DVD drive.

Thanks

Ross

[Elmar]

ok, i need the output of dmesg and lsusb

if you boot from cd you should mount the windows partition to store the output files. i dont know your system configuration, but i think the following should work

Code Select Expand


mount /dev/sda1 /mnt -t ntfs-3g
cd /mnt
dmesg > dmesg.txt
lsusb -v > lsusb.txt


now you should have the both txt files in c:\

[cybermole]

Hi,

Here is the info you wanted, I had to attach a USB flash drive to save the files. Well you can see that in the file, also I am booting from a USB DVD caddy.

My system setup at the time of collecting the info:

USB 2GB Flash drive
USB DVD-RW
16GB SSD - FS=HFS+
16GB SD CARD FS=FAT32

Hope this all helps! Thanks for your time btw . I having problems uploading the files.. they are here on the MS Sky Drive.

http://cid-d961ae2ad845fac7.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public?lc=2057

Ross

[Elmar]

it seems the card reader is not connected to usb. so its not possible to boot from it with the plop boot manager

regards
elmar

[cybermole]

Damn... Thanks for your time and help. If you can think of any way to boot from this type of device that would be super!

Thanks
Ross