[GTALUG] Intel Baytrail systems may become stable under Linux!

[Scott Sullivan]

On 12/02/17 10:47 PM, William Park wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 03:34:06PM -0500, Scott Sullivan via talk wrote:
>> Popped the latest multi-arch Debian ISO (8.7.0) into my trusty ZALMAN
>> external drive with virtual CD/DVD function.
>> https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235059
>
> What is "virtual CD"?  You mean, you dd ISO to a disk, and the device
> identifies itself to PC as "CD drive" with the ISO image as "CD"?
>

Your describing dumping an ISO on any mass-storage device, and hoping 
that the BIOS is new enough[1] to go 'awh fuckit' and boot the image 
anyways.

The ZALMAN enclosure does something far more clever. It report two 
separate USB devices. One is a Mass Storage devices, the hard drive in 
the enclosure. The other is a CD/DVD rom drive.

The firmware in the ZALMAN, then knows how to read FAT or NTFS file 
systems. It will read from a predefined directory on the harddrive, and 
let you select iso files to 'place in the tray' of the CD/DVD rom drive 
it's pretending to be.

The computer legitimately sees a USB CD/DVD rom, and I can use the 
controls on the ZALMAN to eject and insert different 'disks' at will.



[1]: You go far enough back in PC firmware history, you'll find that 
BIOS didn't originally and won't do that. It's extra code, but came 
along as a good idea somewhere to just be agnostic about the storage 
media, and that propagated forward. There only really a 3-5 companies 
that write PC bios firmware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS#Vendors_and_products

-- 
Scott Sullivan