Booting E2 from USB stick

[security]

Good afternoon all.

Appologies if this has been asked before, I did have a search but it didnt come up with anything pacific.

I have watched the development of E2 for the Azbox for some time now, and am considering putting it on my Azbox Premium HD eventually.

I have been led to believe by someone I know that you can leave the base firmware as it it and can have E2 installed on a thumb drive and boot from there, can anyone confirm whether this is possible please, and if so point me in the right direction?

I am not talking about flashing E2 to the box the way it was described to me was that it literally just boots from the USB but I cannot find anything to support this, I have found info relating to people flashing E2 to there box and then are able to boot original firmware from there USB but not vice versa.

Any help with this woudl be greatly appreciated.

Regards Rob.

[donki]

I have never heard this being done on an AZBox and I myself have never tried because I think the AZBox boot loader will just ignore BA. On the ME at least. Never worked when I had an Elite previously. Not sure about the Premiums but can't see them being any different from the Elite. Also the fact that you have not been able to find any info would seem to indicate that it's a non starter.

For the record. I have always found it better to run my images from HDD on a DM as getting a compatible USB stick and getting it to work is just too much trouble for me to be asked. The AZbox's don't have the same limitations as DM's so it is hard to see what the benefit would be in running images outside of flash. The ME has three flash areas so one can multi-boot 3 different images. Sadly there aren't three different compatible images out there one can pick and choose between. So pretty pointless having the facility anyway except to keep a live backup in case things go wrong which they have never done.

Hope I didn't bore you too much.

BTW it would be nice if you posted an introduction.

[security]

Hi Donki,

My Apologies, I believe I did post an introduction when I first registered with the site (some time ago mind!)

Thank you for the prompt response, maybe I will just have to bite the bullet and flash it then, the only thing putting me off unless you can confirm otherwise but on my standard firmware I can browse to a network drive to play fims etc and when I was playing with my brothers Azbox that has E2 on it I could not find any way of finding a networked drive?

If the above is possible is there any image that is currently the most reliable?

Thanks again, Rob.

[donki]

Hi Rob

You have to first mount the share you want to access. In E2 one does this via Menu-Setup-System-Network-Network Browser. Not all images have this installed as standard but the AZBox releases do as far as I know. Anyway, once you do a browse it should find all the shares on the network and give you the option to mount and save these. You can even set a user name & password if required or desired. I never do as it's all internal to my home and saves a pain in the ass. Once this is done you can close out of setup and open AZPlay, MediaCentre or whichever you prefer and your share should then appear in your media drive listings. May have to restart E2 first time.

Tip: If your STB is already running and you boot up, your NAS of PC that holds your media shares, later, then you will find you will need to restart E2 for them to appear on your STB. You can also rescan them via the NW Browser, mentioned previously, but I find a quick gui restart quicker and less complex myself.

Hope this helped.

[security]

Thanks again Donki,

Yes that answers my question that it does indeed do what I want it to do, which is a big bonus! my final question then I will stop being a pain the the ass! is to do you know or woudl you recommend any particular image / version as being the most stable at the minute?

I did notice when playing with my brothers that when interragating the menus that it did crach quite frequently

Thanks again, Rob.

[donki]

Latest versions of OpenAZBox or OpenRSI for Premium HD.

OpenAZBox PLi MOD HD Release - 6b
OpenRSI-3.0-azboxhd-20130222 48.19 MB 22-Feb-2013 05:12:22

Bung those into googoyle and bob's yer autie.

I prefer OpenAZBox because TS Panel actually works making the image far more customisable. On OpenRSI, I find is a bit more restrictive but at the end of the day one mans image is anothers nightmare.

PS: Try out the "Thanks" button it's really cool. :)

[security]

Thanks again Donki for all the useful info,

I will read up on this over the weekend, and maybe try to upgrade without bricking it!

By the way nothing personal but not keen on your profile picture! grrrr! lol.