I work in a medical office, and we recently got an ultrasound machine which apparently has a Linux OS. However, it boots right to the ultrasound software when I start it up. I do notice it's an old Cyrix 300 MHz when it first starts.

I know nothing about Linux, but I'd like to do two things:[list=1][*]Get the machine to recognize a USB SD card reader, so I can transfer the bitmap files to my other computers. Currently it doesn't recognize any storage connected to the USB port.
[*]Change the keyboard to Dvorak in the software (the QWERTY hardware doesn't bother me). I don't do a lot of typing on this machine, so this problem isn't as important as the USB thing.[/list=1]
I have checked out this page:
wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/USB_Card_Readers
But I'm really not sure how to interrupt either the program startup or end the program itself, in order to start playing with this whole kernel thing. Never played with kernels in Windows, either, but I can certainly give this a good college try if I can get to what that page talks about.

Anyway, any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

bump

More details about the machine would help, such as how much it resembles a conventional computer and what media it boots from or if it has conventional IDE or floppy controllers.

It's a Pico Sonoace, or Sonoace Pico. The machine itself can be seen here.

Here's some relevant things I see when it boots up:

Award Bios 4.51 PG

SOM-4450 BIOS 1.11

Cyrix Media GX with MMX-S CPU

130048K ok with shared 1024K

IDE Primary Master Fujitsu MHT 2030 AT

Serial Port 3F8 2F8

LILO loading PICO....

(at which point the Pico screen pops up, and soon the program is fully loaded)



I'm unable to do CTRL-ALT-DEL, because the rudimentary keyboard has no delete key. But based on what I detailed above, it does seem to be a regular computer trapped in an Ultrasound's body.

In addition to the Serial port which was recognized, there's also a LAN port and a double USB port. I think those are the only possible input ports for peripherals. It has an empty monitor port, but I assume that'll show the same thing as the built-in monitor.

Since it has a conventional laptop hard drive, I suggest removing it and doing a backup in a PC (pccables.com has adapters), then testing the backup. Saving a backup image to CD would be yet another good thing to do.
I'm assuming you can't afford to break the ultrasound machine for an extended period.
It would be a good idea to use another hard drive to experiment with, so you can return the machine to service easily with the old software.
With the test drive mounted in a PC, you can then boot from a live CD and tweak at will.
Have you gotten any results from Sonoace tech support? They may have a complete deployable image or software upgrade that will solve your problem.