Need help with Compaq Armada m700

[airillini]

Okay trying plop 5.04 boot manager.

I installed Debian with grub as boot manager on usb drive. 

put the cd rom and usb in a new laptop, usb loads okay then i see the grub screen everything is perfect.

put the cd rom and usb in m700 and I get:
EHCI
searching on hosts
removed driver
UHCI
searching on hosts
host1

then sometimes it hangs at the screen and freezes (stars stop moving)  Other times it goes to the screen original plop loading screen (isolinux etc....) without grub showing up.
Another time in green letters it Identified my usb key then said click any key to continue or press N to continue searching?  If I press N i get some error message in red.  If I click any other key it goes back to the original plop loading screen and without grub showing up.

I know that plop can boot this usb because once and only once I was able to boot a slax linux on the same usb drive using plop.  So I know its possible but, just can't figure out why its not working. 

Oh and I have NEVER changed any settings like forcing usb 1.1 etc..... plop has worked once on the m700 but only once.  However it works fine everytime on my new laptop???  Very confusing.

Oh and I tried shift+U and control+U on the m700 and it didn't work.

Any suggestions?

thanks

[Elmar]

hi,
only for testing, did you try a usb drive on another manufacturer?

regards
elmar

[airillini]

hi,
only for testing, did you try a usb drive on another manufacturer?

regards
elmar

yes, I tried the same plop cd and usb drive in my new laptop and it booted grub without problem.  The problem is only with the older laptop?  However, even in the old laptop, the same cd and usb drive worked once but never again.

[Elmar]

sorry, i was meaning testing another usb drive

[airillini]

Yes, I tried with 2 other usb drives. 1 is very new and didn't work at all.

The other one is old and it did not work either. 


The only drive that worked is the one I am currently using.  On this drive, the activity light keeps blinking like plop is looking for something to boot.  I have grub installed on this drive is there anyway I can tell plop where the initrd.img files are?

[Elmar]

hmm,  i have no idea why it worked once and then never again. very strange. this is an old notebook, maybe i get a cheap one at ebay and to look whats going wrong.

can you try to load the default settings in the bios and test usb boot again?

regards
elmar