On Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 9:00:23 AM UTC-7, Dobbins etc wrote:
On 01/21/2017 10:28 AM, 98 Guy wrote:

Wow - old stock 2.5" IDE hard drives are cheap. Cheaper than a thumb
drive of comparable size. I might order a few myself.

That seemed like a good price, so I went for it. If it doesn't last,
then it's not a great loss.

Thanks for that link, I'm getting some too, too cheap to pass up.

Being that old then the main problem may in fact deal with the BIOS not presenting the USB stick properly. Installing the last BIOS update may help immensely with that issue. And it may come down to the choice of USB stick used as well. Some will do FAT16 and some won't - just two other areas that may have been the problem if further studies or efforts down that road are attempted. I may try this myself just for grins. Best of luck.