How to boot from external USB harddrive without BIOS support

I need to boot Knoppix installed to external USB harddisk (I'm trying to rescue an old, damaged machine). There is *not* BIOS support for USB boot on latest available BIOS revision. Can I use a boot floppy or cheat codes to point it at /mnt/sda1 somehow ?

Thanks !
rcs

rcs;
I have used the cheat codes to boot on an sda1 drive which has a knoppix file installed even one with a different kernel.

I know of no way to boot to a drive which has no kernel of Knoppix installed.
I do believe from your description thst your drive has knoppix installed. If you use the same kernel as the kernel in the drive, say 2.6.5 versus 2.6.5 it will boot fully AFAIK. If it has 2.6.7 or 2.6.3 it will boot from 2.6.5 but some functions will be missing and errors will be encountered.

I have booted from a Knoopix 2.6.5 kernel into a DVD Knoppix kernel with 2.6.3 with some functions missing.

All of these I mention were to SDA1 usb drives It might be imperative to use the same kernel series such as 2.4 or 2.6 .

Best of luck with your sda1 drive. You can't hurt it I'm sure>>>

I successfully installed Knoppix 3.7 to the external USB drive. The system has no working hard drives, and I'm using it like this until I fix the power in my house that blew it up. I'll use whatever kernel works.

What cheat codes did you use to boot from the USB ? I was hoping I could leave a boot floppy in it and not touch the CD since the whole release is on the disk. Failing this, I imagine there is no problem booting from CD and telling it to get its image off of the external USB disk and make persistent settings or a home there, which would hopefully free up the CD.

Thanks,
rcs

I asume you have an external usb drive involved and that you have a CD boot option in your computer.

The cheat code to use can be one of two:

If the drive having the Knoppix file is the only drive having a Knoppix file you can simply:

Knoppix26(assuming it is the 2.6 kernel) fromhd


or you may:

Knoppix26 fromhd=/dev/sda1 (Assuming the ID for the drive is sda1)


If your system uses the 2.4 kernel, try:

Linux fromhd


or:

Linux fromhd=/dev/sda1

Best of luck and merry christmas!