[Trlog] bootable USB "thumb drive" for XP

[Dick Frey]

XP is making it tougher to get enough laptops together to run a decent Field
Day network using TR. I have found a solution that does not involve
partitioning:
go to http://www.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html
search for   softpaq sp27213.exe  and download it.

This app partitions and formats a USB drive as a boot and loads DOS from
your computer, very much like making a bootable floppy with the old SYS A:
command. It comes with fairly straightforward directions. First, I re-booted
the XP and went into the BIOS and changed the order in which it selects boot
drives-  USB first, then the CD, then the HDD.

The installed program is called HPUSBFW, a 450k Windoze app. Running it will
reformat the USB "thumb drive" for FAT16, and make it bootable. I'm working
on a brand new HP 3.6GHz XP workstation I just bought for the office. Now
with the USB drive formatted, you go again to HPUSBFW and it will ask where
you want to load DOS from. I said C:\boot (that's where I had found
command.com and the hidden .sys files on my workstation).

Restarting the XP machine again with the thumb drive in the USB slot
resulted in an almost immediate boot and a C: prompt!

I rebooted the machine again without the USB drive and then loaded TR into
it at \log and put an appropriate autoexec.bat in the root so it can find
TR. If you use Himem or Smartdrive with TR, you need to load those .sys
files along with command.com, but with more than 127M of really fast disk
space on the USB drive, that's unlikely.

I took the thumb drive over to WA7AJ's house and stuck it into the USB port
on his XP laptop. We hooked up a null modem cable from it to my W98 laptop
and had an instant TR network. This was something we COULD NOT do at FD with
his computer. I don't have an XP machine at home so I can't check out LPT
keying or talking to my radio on COM1, but I think it's there. Worth a try.

This 128MB USB drive came from Costco about a year ago for $39, prices have
dropped since. You could use other kinds of solid memory but they have to
appear as boot drive choices in your BIOS !!!

YMMV. I am no computer guru but this was pretty simple.


Dick Frey    k4xu