A kernel loader for the USB drive that I can't otherwise use as a boot for Knoppix?

I looked at the great wiki documentation that was recently posted, but I already had bought a 2 GB stick, and broke it out of the packaging. (I suppose I could still return it, but my experiences with attempting to get *anything* booted off a USB stick has met with failure over the weeks--whether using Slack, DSL, Knoppix, whatever, on 64 MB, 256 MB or 2 GB. I don't want to spend another dollar on a 1 GB drive only to find it doesn't work on that either.)

(BTW, I tried

mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 64 32

...on a 2 GB and the Linux couldn't deal with that, so I instead wrote mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 1 64 32, and it took. But I don't know if that's a valid solution. I ended up pulling it out and formatting it FAT using Windows XP.) Then carried through with the rest of the process of preparing the USB for booting per the wiki instructions.

But the T60 doesn't see it as bootable. I tried everything except buying a 1 GB, but I'm kind of fed up with the BIOS. My chances of it working with a 1 GB are zero.

So, is there a way to rig this up so that the CD version (which is fine) can be used to boot the contents of the USB, so that I can write stuff to it, and install packages and whatnot?

I tried various cheat codes hoping that one of the boot arguments could do that, but they don't seem to. I'd like to get something to stick to the /var/www but at this point it looks like my choices are limited to pulling the notebook hard drive and sticking an old one into it so that i can just install Fedor and be done with it.

Thanks for any advice.
Ron