Author Topic: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB  (Read 5740 times)

Jacopo Del Vivo

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Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« on: May 05, 2021, 07:28:51 pm »
Title. I've found that flashing USBs (with Rufus) using ecs diskettes (ecsdisk0.dsk, ecsdisk1.dsk etc) included in the cd works just fine and they boot without any problem(maybe because the eee mounts the usbs as "normal" drives?).

The problem is that right after booting off the first diskette, it asks for the "ecsdisk1.pf" file (and presumably it'll ask for ecsdisk2.pf and ecsdisk3 later on) and copying it to a standard fat32 usb doesn't work, with the installer saying something like "invalid format".
Should I try formatting the usb in fat32 with DFsee and try again? or is there any other way to get the eCS installer to work on a USB (without using floppy diskettes)?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my choppy english :)
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 07:42:56 pm by Jacopo Del Vivo »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2021, 08:22:20 pm »
Hi Jacopo Del Vivo, welcome to the OS2World forum.

For what I know, I never know about a procedure to install eCS (eComStation) from an USB Flash drive. On those days, it was always needed a DVD drive to install the OS. There were some other technique to clone the HDD image from an installed machine to other one.

Today, I use ArcaOS 5.0.6 and I install it from a USB flash drive, since that OEM version of OS/2 has formal support for it.

I never installed eCS from an USB flash drive, I don't have much experience with Rufus. I don't even remember correctly if the latest version of eCS, 2.2 beta II, (December 2013) was able to boot from an USB DVD drive. Also, we haven't get any news about eComStation and its company since 2014.

If someone else has some experience, please let us know.

Regards
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 08:26:13 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Jacopo Del Vivo

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Re: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2021, 08:43:12 pm »
Hi Jacopo Del Vivo, welcome to the OS2World forum.

For what I know, I never know about a procedure to install eCS (eComStation) from an USB Flash drive. On those days, it was always needed a DVD drive to install the OS. There were some other technique to clone the HDD image from an installed machine to other one.

Today, I use ArcaOS 5.0.6 and I install it from a USB flash drive, since that OEM version of OS/2 has formal support for it.

I never installed eCS from an USB flash drive, I don't have much experience with Rufus. I don't even remember correctly if the latest version of eCS, 2.2 beta II, (December 2013) was able to boot from an USB DVD drive. Also, we haven't get any news about eComStation and its company since 2014.

If someone else has some experience, please let us know.

Regards
Thanks for the reply! Yes, I've heard of ArcaOS, but since I'd probably install it only on my eee (actually, I'd probably install it on my "main" laptop too if its wireless card is supported), I'll wait some time before buying a license. I guess I'll try again with what I have in the meantime :)
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 09:07:58 pm by Jacopo Del Vivo »

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2021, 01:00:20 am »
eCS definitely boots from a USB DVD drive.

Unless it is a museum piece, ArcaOS does not support the wireless feature of your laptop.
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Dave Yeo

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Re: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2021, 01:38:38 am »
Hi Jacopo, the problem is that after using the BIOS to boot the USB stick, eCS has no way to read the USB stick until it is installed, a chicken and egg problem.
ArcaOS gets around this by creating a ram disk and installing a minimal OS to that and then running the install from it.
As Neil said, another option is a USB DVD drive.

Jacopo Del Vivo

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Re: Installing eCS on a EEEPC 701 with USB
« Reply #5 on: May 08, 2021, 10:23:45 pm »
eCS definitely boots from a USB DVD drive.

Unless it is a museum piece, ArcaOS does not support the wireless feature of your laptop.
Hi Jacopo, the problem is that after using the BIOS to boot the USB stick, eCS has no way to read the USB stick until it is installed, a chicken and egg problem.
ArcaOS gets around this by creating a ram disk and installing a minimal OS to that and then running the install from it.
As Neil said, another option is a USB DVD drive.
Hi, thanks for the replies and sorry for the delay! Yeah I ended up buying a USB DVD drive.
But before that, I did a lot of research and came to know about ramfsos2, but well, I didn't really understand how to run my own eCS "installer" with it
Regarding the wireless features, I found out that the genMU test package supports it (or at least, the readme does say so) gonna try and see how it goes :)

p.s. the wireless card in question is an atheros ar956x (vendor id 168c, deviceid 0036)
« Last Edit: May 09, 2021, 10:15:20 am by Jacopo Del Vivo »