PCMCIA, USB, & Pendrive Linux Multiboot ISO

[Toadleyb]

I have a laptop (Dell C400) set up to dual boot Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows XP.  I have succesfully added Plop Boot Manager to my Grub menu so that if I need to I can boot the computer from USB.  The laptop has only USB 1.1 so I have installed a USB 2.0 pcmcia card and with the help of Elmar can boot from the pcmcia card.

Here are my problems.  If I use pendrivelinux to create a bootable usb it will work fine from the 1.1 port on my laptop but will not work from the pcmcia usb.  It recognizes the pcmcia card usb but then at some point, depending on what I am trying to boot, it will time out trying to find files.  It appears that when trying to boot any type of linux distro it does not mount the pcmcia card.

If I create a multiboot flash drive with multiboot iso from pendrive linux, nothing linux based will boot from either usb port. 

In both cases I can boot anything dos based but not linux based.  I am fairly new at linux but it appears like I said that for some reason once any linux distro starts to boot it looses connection with the usb drive and is not able to find the files it needs to start.

Any ideas?

[tyeutyeu]

Hello,

I had only USB 1.1 on my Sony VAIO laptop too. So I bought a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card. I created an USB boot with Lili USB cretor with Lubuntun 10.04. But I can't boot it with the PCMCIA card. Elmar explain me that the linux distro must contain the module to boot with pcmcia support.
The linux distro Slitaz 3.0 works fine for me !
I am looking for other small linux distros to create a multiboot on my USB key.
Have you ever try something else who works ?
thank you for your help