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The OP will be along in a while to give his assessment of the suggested
techniques and how they fit his aspirations.
Here I am. And yes, I have run installs on USB Drives, on one system, and then tried to boot it on another. Things that go wrong include different naming conventions for Ethernet, sound woes, and even (at least once) only getting into Text Mode, due to wildly different Video hardware. So what I was trying to figure out was, what's involved in booting a Live DVD (or USB) iso system, and if anybody had figured out how to populate the file systems, yet do Hardware Tests, during the booting process.
Again, thanks everyone!
Kenneth Parker