I recently bought a 2GB drive (before I checked my BIOS) thinking that I wanted to install a distro on this drv for backup/troubleshooting purposes...I found the instructions to do so and one of the first steps was/is to check the bios...to make sure you can boot from a usb device.

And of course I cant....my bios will reconize my 3 hd's and floppy along with my dvd-rom and dvd-rw but of course no usb entry.
I have usb ports on my linux machine that work but does this have to do with the OS software?
To have USB support should I flash my bios?
os = opensuse 10.2
motherboard = supports my AMD XP 2400 processor 2.4GHZ...1GB Ram memory...
...thoughts please

Support for booting to USB is entirely an issue with your motherboard's BIOS, there is nothing you can do about it on the OS side. If there is an update for your BIOS that supports USB booting, then update to that version. If not, then you will have to chainload the system on the USB device with a bootloader on a disc or installed on the primary HDD.

I understand about the update for my bios...checking that out tonight...but I have no clue what your talking about...

"If not, then you will have to chainload the system on the USB device with a bootloader on a disc or installed on the primary HDD."

...is there a url/link that you know of that can explain this...or should I try Google?

What he is trying to say in a nut shell is that you can make a bootable CD that will just trigger booting to the USB drive. That is a workable for not having to mess with Bios upgrades.

It's basically the same thing as adding a Windows install to an already existing Linux Distro install without wiping the drive.