Is there an external hard drive that - once plugged in (USB, parallel,
or PCMCIA) - becomes automatically the boot device for my Sony Vaio
PCG-R505DL laptop (instead of the internal drive)?

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Request for Question Clarification by pwizard-ga on 04 Nov 2002 07:53 PST

Does your computer (through the BIOS) support the boot to USB hard disk function?

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Clarification of Question by packhamster-ga on 04 Nov 2002 08:39 PST

Although it is a Phoenix BIOS I don't think that this custome version
supports it. The BIOS option itself does only allows legacy floppy as
additional boot device (besides CD-ROM and hard drive).

Come on, I wouldn't spend $10 if it was THAT easy... ;-))

SCSI drives are readily the boot drive.  This can be connected by a
PCMCIA SCSI controller, or by a parallel-to-SCSI converter.  However,
they do not "automatically" take precedence over other drives. 
Possible solutions include: (1) disabling the internal hard drive, to
make the SCSI drive become C:, or (2) programs like V-Com's System
Commander to select the boot drive manually on every boot.

Question remains on whether boot commanders like v-Com or OS Selector
have enough control over the PCMCIA port at the time of their
presence. Parallel to SCSI converter need a driver, the only remaining
question is if their is enough PCMCIA control at boot time to allow an
external device to be the boot device...

If the BIOS on your laptop does not support direct booting via pcmcia,
you could do the following(which I've already found to be working):
You can create a compiled boot disk(Floppy disk) in Linux, which will
boot linux, load the kernel on a ramdisk, and when done, will switch
the root directory to that of pcmcia drive.  Then you are free to
use your floppy drive and your pcmcia external drive becomes the main
drive.   If you need more details, please let me know.