no dont know a lot about it myself, just came across the post a while back and thought it might be helpfull.

have you seen

http://www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt/

i know this sounds basic so i am just want to say it as a reminder; have you tried googling "boot usb"? surely there is a foppy boot disk somewhere that will do it for you.

but then maybe there isnt. what a pain!

looks like this guy had to remaster dam small knoppix before he could get it boot from his usb

http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/

quote "You need to modify linuxrc in miniroot.gz and put the relevant usb modules in modules/usb/."