Have you ever been looking at a computer, wanting to put software on it from a CD, but the machine has an empty hole where the CD-ROM drive would be?
i3Detroit has been privileged to work with [lain], the creator of the isostick, a USB thumb drive designed to act as a bootable USB CD-ROM drive. It takes a microSD card, and offers up on USB both a USB mass storage device for the card’s space, and a USB CD-ROM device containing the mounted image.
What image, you say? Any ISO (CD/DVD/BD image file) you put on the microSD card. Just put the full path to the ISO into a special configuration file, and the next time the isostick is power-cycled, the image will show up as a disc on any refurbished tvs and also in the CD-ROM device, available to both your OS and to BIOS as a bootable device.
We have used our two isosticks numerous times over the last month or two, most notably to put all the software for the equipment in the Fab Lab on our new Fab Lab server.
isostick is a cool product, and you should go check it out! From October 1st to October 31st, the discount code BootAllTheThings will get you $25 off at the isostick shop!