Can't boot from USB drive

[imrazor]

I have a motherboard with one PATA port and no available IDE connectors, so I'm trying to make do with a USB drive. I tried once to install Myzar 10.4.9, and that failed. Now I'm trying to install an AMD-specific 10.5.1 DVD, and I'm having the same trouble. Unfortunately I downloaded the Leopard disk sometime ago, and I'm not aware of it's specific lineage. I can't get a good 10.5.2 torrent, so that's right out. I also have a 10.5.1 retail Leopard DVD (genuine Apple) if that's any help.

 

The install DVD boots and apparently installs correctly, but once installed the USB drive won't boot. I've made sure that the partition is marked active. When it tries to boot, I just get a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner. My best guess is that the Darwin boot loader isn't getting installed for whatever reason. Some ideas I had were to install chain0 to the USB boot sector (under Linux I'd do something like "dd if=/chain0 of=/dev/sda bs=512".) Or would simply copying chain0 to the root directory of the USB drive do the trick? Another thought I had was to install the bootloader on my Windows drive and call it from boot.ini.

 

Anyway, is my diagnosis correct? And do I have the proper cure?

 

My sig is outdated. My new mobo is an ASROCK ALIVENF6G-VSTA with an Athlon X2 4600+. It has an nForce 430 chipset (any chance of SATA working?)

 

Thanks....

[imrazor]

Well apparently I was right about the bootloader not getting installed on the USB drive. I copied chain0 from the install CD onto my NTFS partition, and added the following entry to my boot.ini file:

 

C:\chain0="Mac OS X"

 

and Presto! I was able to boot from the USB drive. However there's a wrinkle. It wouldn't boot at USB 2.0 speeds. It would just hang at Waiting for root device to start (or something similar.) On a hunch, I disabled USB 2.0, and it booted - very slowly. Anyone know how to get USB 2.0 speeds out of an nForce 430 board?