Hello there and happy new year,

I bought a samsung nc10 plus.
It boots fine from the USB (TinyCoreLinux).
And: there is a SD card port in the front side of this netbook.
Is there a possibility to boot it from the SD card port?
Know somebody a bootloader recognizing SD ports for booting? (I have several distro on my 8GB SD card with extlinux).

On my old desktop, I have the "plop" bootloader for booting it from the USB port, despite this port is not recognized as bootable by the BIOS; perhaps something exist for SD ports anywhere in this world?.

I think you need to start over.

First take a cold power off system and insert a known working live usb to this nc10. Then power up to bios. Can you see the hard drive order. Usually bios's have two ways to show the boot order. One is buy the standard floppy, cd, hard drive type and the other is buy moving the available hard drives up or down in that list. You need to see if either the live usb or eventually the SD card to see if they boot to this bios choice to allow it to be the first in the hard drive selection. Then let the system boot to the hard drive in the floppy, cd, hard drive choice menu.

I could not see a menu in the BIOS of this samsung nc10 plus for booting from the SD.
I contacted samsung and asked
a) how to do it
b) to send a new BIOS if it is not possible currently.

I said nothing about a new bios.

I said to look at the menu choices in the bios you have.

Modern bios's don't use usb as a usb to boot generally, they use the usb as if it were a hard drive. When you insert a sd or flash the bios add's that to the hard drive choices.

The samsung nc10 dont boot from the SD drive (a place is in the front of the netbook).
Samsung dont want to make any BIOS change for allowing this.
This is a disadvantage to the ASUS notebook I have.
Think about a bootable SD place by ordering a PC: it can be a parameter for a future choice (booting from a SD place IS GOOD because it dont use an USB port).

know somebody if the plop bootloader would recognize the SD place of the netbook? (I will try it as soon I have a bit time).
This would be my last try.

I contacted the plop bootloader developper. lets wait the answer if samsung nc10 + plop can make the linux starting from the SD.

Finally, I could boot the samsung nc10 plus from the SD port in the front (the developper of the plop bootloader informed it should be ok).

This is a workaround but with that method, NO usb port is used and they can be used for an usb mouse, a card reader, an usb modem. The other advantage is: a SD card in the SD port dont take much place and dont much stick out of the netbook.

THANKS to plop. See http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

Method 1:
- make an usb stick with extlinux or syslinux on it
- make a submenue of extlinux of that usb for starting the plop bootloader
- setup the bios of the netbook for starting from the usb
- put the usb in an usb port
- put the SD card (with a bootloader on it and an operating system) in the front port of the netbook
- switch on the netbook
- when the prompt appear in the extlinux bootmenue, choose the plop boot loader
- when plop is started, choose the usb submenue of plop
- then the SD card and its operating system on it (start with extlinux) will be launched
- dismount later the usb stick where plop is
.. no usb is used!
Perhaps it runs with plop installed on the hdd; I did not try. But there is no reason this would not run.

Method 2:
- install plop and tinycorelinux on a SD card (parallel boot with extlinux)
- put that card on an usb adapter (I have the luck to have a card adapter from TCHIBO in Germany which is recognized by all BIOS until now).
- start the netbook from the USB adapter (and the card on it)
- start plop from the SD card (it is on the screen)
- take the card away from the usb adapter and put it into the SD port in the front of the netbook
- choose the usb menu of plop (still on the screen)
- it boot then automatically into the SD card
- choose TinyCoreLinux (not plop.. or other OS you will have on that card)..
and it boots.

The syslinux of my usb stick or SD card

# SD card 2GB
# Default boot option to use
default menu.c32
TIMEOUT 600
#
# Prompt user for selection
PROMPT 0
#
MENU TITLE Boot Main Menu SD 2GB which can be connected to an usb adapter
#
LABEL bootloader plop for usb etc.
MENU LABEL bootloader plop for usb etc.
linux /boot/plpbt.bin
TEXT HELP
try this to see if plop can redirect to another
usb or SD port for freeing the USB adapter
in case the SD is on it
ENDTEXT
#
LABEL core linux
MENU LABEL core linux
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/boot/core.gz waitusb=5:UUID="A139-1298" tce=UUID="A139-1298" vga=ask quiet showapps pause kmap=qwertz/de-latin1 nodhcp printk.time=1 mydata=datafonic lst=corevesa.lst
TEXT HELP
boot tinycorelinux xvesa
ENDTEXT