real old laptop...help
Forum: Laptops
Topic: real old laptop...help
started by: lxlsubzer0lxl
Posted by lxlsubzer0lxl on Feb. 08 2004,02:35
i have a really old laptop that only has a floppy drive, how can i get DSL on it? because the only downloads on the site are .iso
Posted by bluefreak on Feb. 08 2004,11:17
does it have usb? if u connect a usb cd drive to it then do a hd install it might work. or u could put dsl on a usb flash drive and boot it from there.
Posted by Modrak on Feb. 08 2004,11:56
Get some single-floopy distro with NFS support and install from network :-)On 560MB disk it looks like this...
-----------PREPARE----------
1. Do 2 partions: 60 MB (FAT) and 500MB (ext2)
2. Copy the DSL-CD thru NFS to the FAT partion(so the FAT part. will have the same file layout like the CD !!! IT MUST !!! )
3. Boot DOS.Take a floppy with syslinux.exe
4. a:>syslinux c:
-----------REBOOT----------
5. The DSL shoud boot live, like from CD
>>> If you just want to have DSL live, like the CD , STOP HERE
6. Do a HD install and lilo setup...
----------REBOOT-----------
The DSL will boot up from the ext2 part.
Format the 60MB part as linux swap :-)
# mkswap /dev/hda1 (the fat part.)
# swapon /dev/hda1 (the swap is alway good)
Posted by hasty on Feb. 08 2004,14:40
It's worth persevering as your old machine will get a new lease of life. It runs great on a p150 with 32 mb ram.Do you have access to another computer?
If so you could try connecting with a network or parallel port cable & booting using a single floppy distro such as tmsrtbt or nuclinux. (google will find both)
Toms uses both plip & slip so you could establish a tcp/ip connection between them and copy the CD over (Don't know if a network install is possible with these - too long since I fiddled with them)
A couple of years ago I transferred win95 to a floppy only laptop using a parallel port cable and tomsrtbt using plip.
Took ages to complete as the speed is about 100mb an hour
But it does work & whats half an hour of conviviality ?
Posted by hasty on Feb. 08 2004,14:46
Just a thought but if someone does get this transfer to a floppy only laptop sorted (hopefully lxlsubzer0lxl ) ), would they please post the details on the forum as it seems a common problem with older kit.
Posted by lxlsubzer0lxl on Feb. 08 2004,20:25
yea i have anotehr computer, thats the 1 im on, and all it has is a floppy drive, nothing else lol except for a thing to plug the printer intoand an extra monitor and a mouse, that it.it has 12288 kb of ram, and 260 megs of hd space
Posted by Modrak on Feb. 09 2004,19:31
LPT (paralel,printer port) link...in linux you can do NetWORK with it.Unfortunately I don't know anything more :-( But it could be done:cool:
Posted by Bugs on Mar. 10 2004,11:45
I have had the exact same problem I have a toshiba satelite 220CS with only a floppy drive. I came up with an idea my girlfriend has a IBM thinkpad, I removed the IBM's harddisk, put the toshiba one in it, installed linux then replced both harddisks. not sure if it works fully as yet wirth giving a go tho
Posted by Delboy on Mar. 10 2004,15:50
Me too. P133mmx 40megs ram laptop - floppy drive only. I used an external cd-rom drive conected thru' the paralell port. The drive came with a boot floppy with basic DoS boot command which allowed me to start from scratch. I used a WIN98 'system' or 'startup' floppy to completely reformat the hard disk, used floppy drive to copy FIPS partition splitter programme to make Linux free space, then the CR-Rom and its boot floppy copy the DSL iso files and folders into a 'Knoppix' directory you have to create on the C:\ drive.Using Rawrite programme on the DSL boot.img file you create a DSL boot floppy which fires up DSL as 'live' but from your C:\
Hard disk install thereafter is pretty easy - bingo: a completely Micros&ft free computer.
Persevere - the end result is worth it.
(see Vector Linux 3.2 download site - 'dostools' directory for FIPs and RAWRITE tools)
Posted by davide on Mar. 11 2004,11:36
in most acses posted in this forum solution was provided by takin hd off the laptop, connecting to another pc, then creating 3 partitions (or two) and cpoying /konppix dicrectory or even the whole .img file in one of those partions.this willa llow a poorman install (read knoppix FAQ about that) and let you install then on the other partition.
let us know whether 12 megs are enought to get a laptop work with x-windows.
Posted by guestuser on Mar. 31 2004,17:43
Hey,This is what I have done, and it can/will be very useful in the future. check out ebay, and get yourself a laptop harddrive adapter. It allows you to plug your laptop HDD into your desktop. I have a very old Toshiba 105CS that is very slow. I just plugged the HDD into my 1.4GHz desktop and do everything there. I origionally got it for doing normal installs like mandrake or what not that required lots of compiling and installing, but it also helps when doing a DSL install and the such. Also very helpful if you only have a FDD. Just my 2 cents.
Posted by sl70 on April 11 2004,17:22
I have been struggling with getting DSL on my old Thinkpad 701C with a 75MHz 486, 360MB HD, 16 MB of RAM and no CD drive. I was able to copy the /KNOPPIX directory to the HD via NFS (I have a very rudimentary RedHat 6.2 running on it now), and I made a boot floppy. Everything goes fine until it tries to load the frame buffer, when I get this message:modprobe: Can't locate module fb0
In fact, I looked in /lib/modules/... etc., I can't find any module named fb0.
Any help?
Posted by cbagger01 on April 12 2004,03:41
try typing in "knoppix vga=normal" at the F2 boot prompt.
Posted by AwPhuch on April 16 2004,20:37
I got it to work using floppies like the 1st guy said on page 1....I wrote up a HOWTO in the HOWTO section and Im sure anyone with very limited experience can figure it outBrian
AwPhuch
Posted by xlynx on May 10 2004,03:30
| Quote (sl70 @ April 11 2004,13:22) |
| Everything goes fine until it tries to load the frame buffer, when I get this message: modprobe: Can't locate module fb0 In fact, I looked in /lib/modules/... etc., I can't find any module named fb0. Any help? |
fb0 is the first framebuffer device, just as eth0 is the first ethernet device. You need to find what type of video card your particular laptop model has; a common one is neomagic (modprobe neofb).