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Hey everyone, just got my samsung nc10 and am very happy with it. Have upped the os to vista and am, so far very very happy with the netbook. It was a tossup between the 1000H and this, and given the probs that the 1000H has with sound under os x (my main os) I decided to go with the samsung….
However…..
I also wanted to boot different distros of linux from time to time, via usb. From a usb hard drive or flash drive, this is no prob, and I can be up and running in no time. But using the sd card reader? No luck whatsoever. The card reader works perfectly and is detected as an USB device under device manager in XP, so my understanding is this is basically just another usb port dressed as an sd/multi card reader. Yet when I put a card in there, it’s not recognised in the BIOS setting…. there is a setting for USB HDD and USB FDD so I would guess one of these represents the card reader.
Its really upsetting for me, as i was hoping to have an sd card in there pretty much permanently so I could launch linux without having anything poking out of my computer.
Am I missing something obvious? Has anyone booted from the SD card reader yet? I’ve booted from all the other usb ports no probs, but can’t get the sd card reader to work.. Anyone have any pointers? I’ve formatted, tried SD and SDHC but no luck… I could really do with a pointer if anyone’s done this with ubuntu or something.
I’m really hoping it’s just my sd cards… but I’ve tried so many I doubt it.
Anyone done this with any distro yet?
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I’ve sent off a question to samsung directly about it. I’ll report back when they do.UPDATE:
Ok guys, not the answer I wanted. I attach below the answer I received from samsung….. I’ll give up on this for now. Does anyone know if this can be added by a hacked bios? Or does this mean waiting foir samsung to add it? Maybe it’s hardware related, perhaps it doesn’t start when the computer starts. Anyone any ideas?
Still, the reply:
Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics. We appreciate your interest in our newly released line of Notebook PC’s.I do apologize but there is no option within the Boot Order of the BIOS to enable the memory card slot as a bootable device. Using a USB flash drive will work as USB HDD is an option within the Boot Order.
Damned shame if you ask me. I’m curently using a USB stick which is ok, but does pop out a bit. I was hoping to have an sd card version just for when I was spending extended periods on it.Fingers crossed, but not good.
UPDATE 2:
I’ve just send an email to the sammy tech guys asking for reasons why you can’t boot off the SD card and whether they can update it in the BIOS. We’ll see. If anyone else cares about this, perhaps send them an email regarding it as well. They’ll only fix it if they know it’s a problem.
For convenience, here is the direct link. I’ll keep everyone posted of anything I hear….
http://ars.samsung.com/customer/form/formmail/usa/input_SEA.jsp?SITE_ID=1&PROD_ID=1352
If you want to get technical, pop open your NC10 and take a look at the contact points. From what I understand, the SD reader is on USB headers? If that’s true, could you technically reroute them to one of the USB slots?
[quote1227586778=dougp]
If you want to get technical, pop open your NC10 and take a look at the contact points. From what I understand, the SD reader is on USB headers? If that’s true, could you technically reroute them to one of the USB slots?
[/quote1227586778]this sounds interestinng…
if you were to do it, you could make it switchable..
Hey everyone, good idea about popping it open. In my case I checked under windows device manager to see what it was classified as. When i placed a card in, one of the USB hubs changed to show me what was being used, hence I’m happy with the idea that it is usb bus driven. There may be a suble tech point that I’m missing, but prima facie, it’s USB.
Anyway, after my last email I received some encouraging news. After making an official suggestion to sumsung, they have sent it to their engineering department for review. Fingers crossed eh?
Anyway, just for full clarity as to what I asked for, here is my email to them:
Many thanks for your quick response.That is a shame. If that is the case, may I make an official request that this be implemented in a future BIOS update? I know it is a feature many people are highly keen to use in the Netbook community, and mars very slightly what is otherwise and exceptionally well made product.
I can’t see any reason why this wouldn’t have been implemented originally (as it is a USB bus driven device) other than you were unaware that this was an issue for people in the Netbook community. If there is a hardware reason for why this cannot be done, please advise. Before I sent you an email, I posted the same question on several forms and these have received a great many hits. As such I can presume it is not just me who thinks this an important feature and I am keeping the online community abreast of any news from you regarding this matter.
Many thanks once again for your time, and really, other than this one thing, compliments on an exceptional product. I hope it is very successful for you.
Yours sincerely.
PS, should you be wondering, the reason for people wanting this feature is that sometimes people who boot Linux (which I appreciate isn’t officially supported by you) on the machine don’t want a device hanging off the side as it may damage the usb ports etc. Your machine works most excellently with the Linux I run (for which I highly commend this product), and it is thus a real shame that I cannot run it in a more convenient form. I so so hope this can be resolved. Many thanks once again.
And their reply here:
Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics. We appreciate your interest in our newly released line of Notebook PC’s.I do apologize for the issue on the BIOS not having that boot option. I will forward this email to our engineers for further review. Thank you and have a happy and safe holiday.
I append my email so that anyone who wants to get in touch with samsung can refer to what I asked for. It would give a more unified impression of us wanting this feature (presuming I’m not the only one of course, lol). Just a suggestion of course.Anyway, as I say, fingers crossed, just maybe this will be resolved in our favour :-)… or they could just be waiting for me to go away. Still, here’s hoping.
If they manage to implement this, it’d be awesome – you can pickup SD cards of a decent capacity for pretty cheap now, especially if you have a microcenter in your town.
Yeah exactly, I’ve a 16GB SDHC card just sitting to one side just for this. I so hope they can do it 🙂
Oh, and just a suggestion, should this ever be implemented. If anyone doesn’t want a card protruding at all, remember that you can use the smaller rs-mmc cards. These have an adapter that makes them ‘full size’ for these card readers and this can be filed/cut away. The max size for these is around 4GB at the mo, so I may give it a go if they manage to get this working in the BIOS… I’ll post a how to in the mod section if it ever comes to pass. Also, there is the fabled miCard which, being up to 2TB alledgedly, would be awesome. We’ll have to see…
If we all sent in this exact same request for a bootable SD card slot, the ticket for this particular issue would quickly rise to the top, and become unavoidable to them. Remember.. Samsung is testing the American market right now to see how their netbook will do and What direction to take.
[quote1228254125=NetbookJim]
Also, there is the fabled miCard which, being up to 2TB alledgedly, would be awesome. We’ll have to see…
[/quote1228254125]i would buy that for sure, but i have a funny feeling it would be pretty bad for booting from because it would be deathly slow.
i want to boot from SD! 🙁
pd: Hey guys, do you know what key should i press at start, to enter the usually pc boot menu?
I’m all for writing in to Samsung to ask for a BIOS update to allow booting from the SDHC card slot..
Until an update arrives (and before anyone starts making connections on the PCB) does anyone know if grub can see the SDHC storage? I am waiting for mine to be delivered so I can’t test yet.
It might be possible to add an entry to grub on the MBR of the internal HD that points to the SDHC card and then chainload the boot if you need a separate MBR on the SD card.
Could be a relatively painless way of getting around the BIOS not wanting to boot the SDHC card.
Roazz – hit F2 when the samsung screen comes up at the begining of the post.
Keeping an eye on this with interest myself 😉 I have minipe setup to boot from usb to do backups, but would much prefer sd as it won’t stick out. OTOH, the usb is probably a lot faster, I just have more sd cards lying around ;D
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