Run Windows from flash memory?

[Slickone]

I have a couple old PC's (P200,64, P500,256) that I'm going to give to my dad just so he can direct connect to (using dial up modem) DUAT (duat.com or duats.com), which is a free weather and flight notification & planner for pilots. I think (hope) connecting directly to their system with modem will give us the same features without having to use the internet and their web interface. Anyway, I was wondering, what would it take to make it run purely from flash memory so doesn't have to wait for it to boot? Just turn it on. He really knows nothing about PC's and not very patient (especially being in a hurry when called to fly human tissue & organs). It would probably be using Win98SE, or possibly Win2K or WinXP.

Could you do that with a USB thumb drive or Compactflash/reader? Could an old PC even boot from USB? In particular, a Compaq Presario 2298 (400-500Mhz K6-2).
Would the programs be able to save data (say, small ini and flight plan files (text files), etc) to it OK?
Would Win98SE work for this?
What size would I need? 256, 512? The DUAT software is 100MB.
Thumb drives are cheap now using hot deals, and I think Compactflash is even cheaper even without a hot deal. I already have a 512MB thumb drive, and 64MB, 128MB and 512MB CF cards.


Or else, I hear of people that have stripped down their Windows on their own (I forget which, 98 or XP), to make it boot from a HDD in less than 10 seconds. The only tool I know about to do that is 98lite, and I don't know if it boots that fast, and isn't free (a USB device would be cheaper).
Say, if I don't need any internet stuff at all, & no games. Just DUN modem use w/ no other networking. How fast would that boot? I'll have to get the HDD specs later.
And maybe a dumb question but if you replace the 98 shell/explorer with 95's (ie 98lite), do programs that will only work with 98 still work?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I don't think older PCs could generally boot from USB. The flash in compactflash and thumbdrives is generally slower than modern hard drives.

 

[ProviaFan]

You can find IDE-to-CF adapters that should let you get around the inability to boot from USB. While cheap CF cards are indeed slower than hard drives, if you get a Sandisk Extreme III or Lexar Pro 133X CF card, it should be close enough in sustained transfer rate to an old hard drive that he won't notice, and the lack of noticeable latency should actually make the system boot fairly quickly. Now, the only problem with this is that Windows will want to write to the disk frequently, and flash memory is known for having limited write cycles. Thus, if you want to put Windows on a high-speed CF card for fast loading, at least make sure the swap file gets stuck on a hard disk so the flash memory isn't worn down too quickly.

 

[SunnyD]

You can run BartPE from flash, though it does it using parts of Win2K3 to get around the way Windows initializes USB via RAMDISK. This method is insanely slow too. Takes about 5 minutes to boot when I tested it on a USB 2.0 Lexar JumpDrive Lightning (they don't get much faster than that one).

Also, your BIOS will have to support USB to boot. Flash isn't a good media type to run a current OS on either. The background of the OS accesses many, many files on an ongoing basis. Flash has a limited lifetime for read/write cycles that an OS would eat up in a short matter of time.

 

[Slickone]

Well darn. For some reason I thought people boot/run from flash often. And I thought about the USB speed, but thought that still might be faster than Windows having to go through it's boot process from a HDD.

So what about option 2 (my 3rd paragraph)?

 

[ND40oz]

You can run the UBCD from flash, but not windows. It's just like running UBCD4 from a cd, except your booting from flash. It uses the Windows PE environment.

 

[Slickone]

Thanks but as I implied, I won't be running anything from flash.