Main Restorations Software Audio/Jukebox/MP3 Everything Else Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements Monitor/Video GroovyMAME Merit/JVL Touchscreen Meet Up Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing Woodworking Software Support Forums Consoles Project Arcade Reviews
Automated Projects Artwork Frontend Support Forums Pinball Forum Discussion Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board controls.dat Linux Miscellaneous Arcade Wiki Discussion Old Archives
Lightguns Arcade1Up Try the site in https mode Site News

Unread posts | New Replies | Recent posts | Rules | Chatroom | Wiki | File Repository | RSS | Submit news

  

Author Topic: Bootable Linux Thumb Drive - free software download or buy preloaded thumbdrive  (Read 9443 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

rugby1

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 128
  • Last login:April 12, 2007, 12:10:12 am
  • I want to build my own arcade controls!

danny_galaga

  • Grand high prophet of the holy noodle.
  • Trade Count: (+1)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 8441
  • Last login:Yesterday at 09:21:49 pm
  • because the mail never stops
    • dans cocktail lounge
so with linux mame this is the perfect mamers tool! no hard drive or cd drive noise. and the insides of your machine looks just that bit more 'arcade' like (",)
nice.


ROUGHING UP THE SUSPECT SINCE 1981

rugby1

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 128
  • Last login:April 12, 2007, 12:10:12 am
  • I want to build my own arcade controls!
Hopefully,  I haven't downloaded it yet and tried it.  Will give it a shot this weekend or early next week....   it takes up 50 MB of your thumbdrive though.... add linux mame and you might not have a whole lot of room for roms on your thumbdrive... not a problem if you only want a handful of games but big problem if you have the entire set of roms.  Thumb drives will get bigger in size though....   just starting to see the 2 Gig drives at a reasonable price. 
« Last Edit: January 27, 2006, 05:26:06 am by rugby1 »

Grasshopper

  • Trade Count: (+1)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2380
  • Last login:November 08, 2023, 07:20:31 am
  • life, don't talk to me about life
You could also try AdvanceCD. That can also be booted from a Thumb Drive.

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson

eightbit

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1849
  • Last login:September 07, 2019, 07:38:11 pm
  • My cab is never done...
I've used DSL, its pretty impressive for a 50mb footprint and for it running off a cd. Never tried mame on it though.

There are lots of guides out there how to make a thumb drive bootable. Its not that hard. I definately wouldn't spend extra money for a pre-loaded one.
My statements are my own opinions. They have the value that the reader gives them. My opinion of my opinion varies between foolish and brilliant and these opinions often change with new information.

rugby1

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 128
  • Last login:April 12, 2007, 12:10:12 am
  • I want to build my own arcade controls!
Yeah, I already own a 1 Gig thumb drive so I can't see paying for another one which is preloaded .....  I would buy a preloaded one though if I didn't already own one.   

grumble

  • Wiki Contributor
  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 28
  • Last login:September 16, 2006, 01:09:08 pm
  • tonight we're gonna party like it's 2084
Speaking of Thumb Drives, I noticed that Best Buy was selling 1Gb Memorex thumb drives for $49 the other day.
As for DSL; I was really impressed with it. It's surprisingly useful and very easy to install and modify to your needs.
Alright. it's saturday night; I have no date, a full bottle of Shasta and my all Rush mixtape....Let's ROCK!!

markb

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 317
  • Last login:April 30, 2011, 06:41:02 am
  • The One and Only.
When the price hits about

Grasshopper

  • Trade Count: (+1)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2380
  • Last login:November 08, 2023, 07:20:31 am
  • life, don't talk to me about life
Be aware though that not all motherboards are capable of booting from a USB drive, especially the older ones.

Yes, booting from USB still seems to be a bit hit or miss with many motherboards. It's amazing how primitive most BIOSes still are.

When I upgraded my motherboard's BIOS a while back I noticed that boot from USB-FDD and USB-ZIP options had been added but they don't appear to work and Asus' technical support is a joke.

As a temporary solution I've managed to set up a simple dual boot system so that the AdvanceCD kernel is booted from hard disk and then all the files are accessed from the thumb drive in the normal way. Not ideal but it will do until I eventually upgrade my motherboard.

Another alternative is to get a CF card and buy one of these adapters.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Compact-Flash-CF-to-IDE-adapter-2-backpanel-ver_W0QQitemZ5859539646QQcategoryZ41994QQcmdZViewItem

I bought one a couple of weeks ago but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Theoretically it should be faster than a thumb drive. The only real downside is that the CF cards are not hot-pluggable.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson