900mhz Radio Cards & RouterOS installed to USB-Stick

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi folks,
This is the beginner section, so I thought it best to ask my beginner questions here =)

I am investigating a medium/large scale wifi network (to cover, potentially, several hundred square kilometers)

I am interested in RouterOS and some of the other MikroTik products, but would really like to be able to play with the OS a little first.

I understand from reading the wiki etc that the OS can be installed on an x86 machine?
My first question is, how might one go about installing the OS onto a bootable USB stick?
I’ve tried a few methods but tend to run into “CDROM not found” errors and a few others, possibly because my test rig leaves alot to be desired.

The network I am looking at running will consist of a 2.4ghz ‘master cell’ with ‘secondary nodes’ (possible 900mhz backhaul) for outer areas of our municipality. Basically a large, point-to-point-to-multipoint network (if that makes any sense to you!)

Therefore, another questions becomes, are 900mhz mini-pci radio cards supported by RouterOS?

I look forward to discussing my project with you folks, and hope that I might offer some of my experience to you also =)

Cheers

Zach Fleming
Mildura, Victoria, Australia!

2

yes, some 900MHz card are supported, search this forum for more info.

you can install on X86 for sure, to do this on a USB stick you can either use CDROM as you tried already, or use Netinstall and put RouterOS on the USB stick when it’s connected to windows. Then just move the stick back to your router and boot from it. You can read here: http://www.mikrotik.com/software.html

CDROM maybe didn’t work because it was SATA and we have seen some devices where SATA CDROM and IDE or USB disks don’t work well together.