VOGONS

Booting MSI K7T Turbo2 from USB stick?

Topic actions

First post, by Gabriel-LG

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Not so long ago, I bought an MSI K7T Turbo2 motherboard, with the intention to use it in an open testbench case.
This motherboard is great for testing, as it has (true) universal AGP, PCI and ISA.

The latest BIOS for this motherboard comes with USB boot support. Which for me was a great win.
But I cannot get the thing to actually boot from a USB stick 🙁

The BIOS does recognize most USB sticks that I connect (sizes varying from 256MB to 8GB), but it will not boot from them.

The attachment PXL_20250813_194048124.MP~2.jpg is no longer available

Has anybody here had succcess booting this motherboard from an USB stick?

I did manage to boot from USB using a plopboot floppy.
(which was a weird but wonderful experience 😜)

I even managed to boot plop from a USB-FDD and then boot from a USB stick, so technically I can boot from USB.
Nice side catch of plop is that it will also boot from my USB 2.0 controller.

Reply 1 of 4, by DaveDDS

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I don't have experience with that exact MB.

I have gotten DOS to boot on a couple different systems that I have where BIOS recognizes USB sticks.

Exact way is obviously going to depend on how BIOS handles it...

In both of my cases stick was recognized as a hard drive.

So, I booted DOS from floppy (real FDD on one sys, USB FDD on the other), then FDISK and FORMAT/S made a bootable system.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 2 of 4, by nali

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Maybe you could try Plop floppy.
There's the option to boot from usb even if the mainboard can't nativelly.
I suggest you select usb 1 mode in the option, i never had succes with the default settings.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

Reply 3 of 4, by Gabriel-LG

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
DaveDDS wrote on 2025-08-13, 20:45:
I don't have experience with that exact MB. […]
Show full quote

I don't have experience with that exact MB.

I have gotten DOS to boot on a couple different systems that I have where BIOS recognizes USB sticks.

Exact way is obviously going to depend on how BIOS handles it...

In both of my cases stick was recognized as a hard drive.

So, I booted DOS from floppy (real FDD on one sys, USB FDD on the other), then FDISK and FORMAT/S made a bootable system.

I succesfully created a USB bootable flash drive, that is not the issue. However, when I configure the motherboard to boot from it, it does not do so.

nali wrote on 2025-08-14, 14:17:
Maybe you could try Plop floppy. There's the option to boot from usb even if the mainboard can't nativelly. I suggest you select […]
Show full quote

Maybe you could try Plop floppy.
There's the option to boot from usb even if the mainboard can't nativelly.
I suggest you select usb 1 mode in the option, i never had succes with the default settings.
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

I used a plop floppy to get the system to boot from USB. And that works.
What I would like is to boot the system from a USB flash drive, without the need for a floppy.

Since this is my testbench, I need to occassionally run Antix Linux on the system. Mainly for trimming/partitioning the SSD. But also for occassional data recovery jobs.

Reply 4 of 4, by nali

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Since I'm also a Linux user, I have a tftp/dhcp/nfs server on my lan.
Just an old laptop hidden in a closet.
It enable me to boot from network with different floppy images, Clonezilla, SystemRescueCD, etc.
It's a bit of work to setup, but very useful when done.
Or course you need a network card that permit network boot ...

I understand it's not what you ask for, but sometimes we have to deal what what we have 😀

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to General Old Hardware
Close window
Close window