Posts Tagged ‘help’

Want: a virtual USB DVD-ROM implemented in hardware

Dear Lazywebs,

I’d like a hardware device which has a USB connection and SD card reader.

I want to copy an ISO file to the SD card, put the card in this mystery USB device, and have the USB device appear like a USB CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. And when I say “appear like”, I mean “indistinguishable from” – it would have the USB mass-storage device type of a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. So the BIOS sees it as true optical removable media, and can boot from it. Whatever operating system I use would see it as true optical removable media.

Being more ambitious, I’d like to be able to put multiple ISOs onto the SD card. There would be a way of “ejecting” the fake drive and then selecting an alternative ISO to “close the fake drive tray”.

Yes, I know I could use something in Windows to mount the ISO as a virtual drive. I could use loopback devices in Linux to mount it too. But that’s not good enough – I can’t easily use it to install operating systems without doing bootloader stuff and other voodoo. And I can’t be arsed to do that.

I just want to copy the ISO to the SD card, and have it appear (to the USB host controller) like a real shiny physical CD.

Please, Lazywebs, make it possible.

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Filed under tech : Comments (0) : Jan 12th, 2010