Laptop has only a PCMCIA CD-Rom

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Laptop has only a PCMCIA CD-Rom
started by: mitymo

Posted by mitymo on Jan. 30 2004,07:51

I have a subcompact laptop that has an external floppy and a PCMCIA CD-Rom. Is there any way that I will be able to boot from a floppy and then get DSL to run from the CD-Rom? Also, will a P166 w/ 96MB RAM be enough to run the GUI and all the apps that comes with DSL? Thanks for your help.

Mo

Posted by Stu Pidasso on Jan. 30 2004,17:50

I'm sorry I can't help you with the booting....my laptop has an internal CDROM. However I can tell you that P166 and 96Mb of RAM should be plenty for DSL to run smoothly.

I occaisonally use DSL (from CD) on a desktop system with a 300Mhz AMD K6 & only 64Mb of RAM and when I do it is more responsive than the Win98 system installed on the machine.

As with any Live Linux CD, the more RAM the better. If you are still worried about performance, you could set up a small swap parition on the hard drive, and DSL will find it and use it (I believe that is true, John, please correct me if I am wrong).

Posted by libretto on Jan. 30 2004,18:04

Hi there,

I have a similr problem, my Libretto 70CT has an external FDD but no CD-ROM. Unfortunately, the FDD isnt picked up on boot, so I have to put the laptop HDD into one of my normal PCs and do an install that way.

Have you tried booting the laptop from a DSL CD?

Posted by mitymo on Jan. 30 2004,18:11

I haven't tried it yet, but I guess it can't hurt to just download it, make a boot floppy and try it. If it doesn't work I guess I will just repartition my HD and install it that way. (I have a win98 boot floppy that has DOS drivers for the PCMCIA CD-Rom. Can you issue a command from DOS to load DSL?) I'll try to get back to you if I figure it out.

Posted by TyphoonMentat on Jan. 30 2004,19:32

DSL is loadable from DOS using loadlin, if you place the DSL KNOPPIX cloop image at C:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX or D:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX or whatever.

Posted by McLinux on Feb. 19 2004,00:49

I just booted DSL on a Sony Vaio with pcmcia cd by using the option line:

knoppix nopcmcia ide2=0x180,0x386

This works for serveral types of linux on serveral models by Sony. I hope it helps you, too.