So I updated the eeprom on the pi400 and still didn’t have any luck getting it to load up on the usb external SSD or a usb thumb drive. I tried various images such as raspberry pi and manjaro. The issue has something to do with the bootloader or uuid but I’m not sure.
So after @Pudge’s suggestion which i had totally forgot about i used my laptop to run the installer and image the micro sd that came with the pi 400. Yes it’s quite small but it worked without a hitch. Now i am going to try and boot the pi 400 on it.
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