Problem creating bootable CF
 

I wasn't sure where to post this. I have read the previous posts and googled for an answer, seems pretty simeple to install GRUB or lilo on a CF card but it doesn't work for me. I can mount a CF via PCMCIA adapter in my laptop as hdc and format/install/copy to it fine. I can't make it bootable however because there are no corresponding BIOS drives since my laptop BIOS doesn't recognize PCMCIA drives. Should be easy right, build the Linux system on the CF, put in the destination system and boot off floppy and make bootable, well my mini-itx board doesn't have a floppy controller so I can't boot off a floppy. Anyone think of an creative way around?

You can use a usb key drive
or other usb media to boot.

If your BIOS can't "see" it there is
no way to boot from it.

You proabably will not be able to boot from PCMCIA but do you have a bootable CDROM drive?

LogicG8, I don't need to boot from the PCMCIA CF, I just need to make it bootable then the CF will go in an IDE-CF adapter.

I guess I could make a bootable CD and boot the mini-itx board from that, can I just write a floppy image to cd (ex. cdrecord bare.i)

Ok, I don't have a cd-rom drive that can read burned cd's except for my laptop and usb burner. The mini-itx board can't boot off the usb burner so I'm stuck again. My Ide to usb adapter is a laptop drive size, so I installed my linux dist on the cf, pulled out ly laptop drive and put the cf-ide and cf card in its place. I am using zipslack and the zipslack boot floppy hangs after it frees kernel memory. Any ideas there?

Strange things is when I put my laptop drive back in it booted up to the grub install menu?? I had to boot off the redhat cd and reinstall grub again.