We have a lot of machines which must be booted from USB only (no other HDD at all). Their BIOSes allow booting from USB, but very slow (1.1?)
So, we came to Plop boot manager for its USB 2.0 driver. We need this:
BIOS boots from USB (80h) -> Plop Boot manager in USB MBR -> [ activation of USB 2.0 driver ] -> GRUB in USB partition bootsector (fast) -> ...
But seems that Plop installs USB driver only before "USB boot", but not before boot from "OS harddisk".
Indeed, Plop can do almost what needed:
1. On selecting "USB" in Plop boot menu, it installs USB 2.0 driver and boots itself again.
2. Then, select "OS harddisk 1" - GRUB works at USB 2.0 speed!
But this requires keyboard interaction.
Is there any way to simplify this bizarre recursion?
you can use syslinux 4.01 instead of grub. it has a modules called "ifplop" made by Icecube. then you run plpbt.bin configured to use usb boot as default and when plop was started then do the other stuff.
best regards
elmar