Based on my knowledge of USB, yes it should work.
But it will be butt-scrape slow.  It will probably
take several hours just to boot.

Another approach that I've used with a laptop whose
BIOS fails to boot over USB is to do a server install
from a separate computer.  In other words, remove the
hard drive from the laptop and install it in some
other computer as the only hard drive.  This computer
needs to have an optical drive.  Do an install of an
image *without* X-windows.

Now pull the hard drive and reinstall it in the laptop.
apt-get the X-windows packages.

One minor glitch with this approach is that the ethernet
interface will be different.  At least with Ubuntu,
the system will find the laptop's ethernet interface
and all will be well.  The only funny is that it will
be on eth1.  Eth0 will be non-functional since it will
be tied to the other computer's interface, which doesn't
exist on the laptop.  I haven't noticed any functional
problems from this.  It's just a little funny.
Undoubtedly it is possible to fix this cosmetic defect.
But since it hasn't caused me problems I just ignore it.
-- 
Allen Brown  abrown at peak.org  http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/
  Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational
  things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the
  principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion. --- Scott Adams


----- Original Message -----
From: "marbux" <[email protected]>
To: "Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux User Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 8:12:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Eug-lug] anyone want some neat Linux-related hardware?

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 6:26 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've done an install on a optical-less laptop using a USB to
> SATA interface and a SATA CDROM.  This works with PATA just
> as well.  And it may be more straightforward than PXE boot.

Hi, Allen,

Any idea whether that method works via a USB 1.0 connection?

I suspect my friend might feel less challenged by Puppy Linux.

Best regards,

Paul
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