Boot from floppy, mount root on USB.

Low-powered system.

[NickCoons]

I'm trying to create an inexpensive, low-powered, low-heat output system for some experimentation. Low-heat is the primary concern, so I had planned on using an Intel socket7 chip in the 200MHz range and then underclocking it below 100MHz.. however it'll work.

I plan to not use a hard drive, because it both consumes too much power and creates too much heat. I would like to use a 1GB USB thumb drive, but a system this old wouldn't support booting from a USB device.. so the idea is to boot from floppy, then mount the USB thumb drive as the root filesystem.

I've seen several HOW-TOs on booting from USB.. but not sure if the information there would apply. I've setup systems to boot from floppy, so I don't think I'll have any issues with that. However, not only have I never used USB thumb drive in Linux.. I've never used any USB device in Linux.

So here's what I'm looking for:
- Some general direction on how to mount a USB 2.0 thumb drive as root once I've booted from a floppy.
- Any suggestions that I may have missed (i.e. is there a limited selection of USB 2.0 PCI cards that operate in Linux?, etc).

This machine is intended to run in an automobile. In the past, I've done this by using a DC/AC invertor that connects to the battery. This is easy, but somewhat inefficient since the computer then converts it back to DC to actually use it. However, this does make sure that the power that the computer receives is relatively clean.

Any suggestions on how to bypass the DC-AC-DC conversion process and thereby using a lot less power?

[bakedjake]

Why not use a PDA with a CF microdrive or SD card?

[uncle_bob]

Have a look at mini itx systems, they are low power and can be fanless, and many of the systems use external bricks powering the box at 12v . There are also lots of folk who have already put them into cars, so you wouldn't need to re-invent the wheel :-)

[bcolflesh]

If you want to try the Puppy distro, they have an info page about this subject:

[goosee.com...]

[NickCoons]

<Why not use a PDA with a CF microdrive or SD card?>

Because I don't have nearly the expansion capabilities on a PDA that I would have on a PC.

<Have a look at mini itx systems, they are low power and can be fanless, and many of the systems use external bricks powering the box at 12v.>

<If you want to try the Puppy distro, they have an info page about this subject:>

Thanks for the suggestions.. I will look in to these.