Making Debian ignore a drive

[klussier at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Thomas Charron" <twaffle at gmail.com>
> On 4/10/07, Michael ODonnell <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
> > Does the BIOS config screen offer the option of disabling
> > that USB device?
> 
>   It sounds like the motherboard has the ability to boot USB drives
> and has them emulate an IDE and/or SCSI drive.  Chances are, there is
> a BIOS option to turn off this capability.  It means you can't boot
> from the USB drive, untill you go into the BIOS and re-enable it.

I wish that were the case. You can't disable this in the BIOS. It's not a drive that is ever supposed to be seen. It's a boot ROM used for IMPI management. Just to see what would happen, I tried installing FC5 on one of the boxes, and it was blissfully un-aware that the device even existed. There is something in the Debian installer that just refuses to ignore it....