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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

Not really BL related but we were given a pentium 100MHz 24MB RAM, Toshiba 
Satellite  420CDT 1996 with external floppy drive and internal CD-ROM 
drive (boots only from floppy or HD - is there some way to run a linux 
bootable CD-ROM anyway?).  1.2G hard drive.

Syschk finds the drive but says it is not formatted.
Fdisk says there are no partitions.  We partition with PQMagic before 
that.  Repartitioned with fdisk. (Tried MS-DOS 6.22, DR-DOS, Win95 and 
Win98 DOS).  Seems to work at first but then displays file names wrong.
Command.com becomes commaod!.! or the like (consistently).  Can't find 
directories or renames them oddly.

Scandisk sometimes works, sometimes not and says not enough memory.  Same 
for Kermit.  Works two times, then not enough memory.  They work fine from 
floppy drive but not hard drive.

Scandisk found a few bad sectors near the disk beginning.  Partitioning 
off the first 10MB or so did not make the rest of the drive usable.  We 
suspected bad sectors under the partition table.

No viruses.  Fdisk /mbr.

Before trying a low-level format we put the drive in the other Toshiba 
pentium where it works perfectly.  The drive from that one won't work in 
this one, same problems.  fdisk /mbr did not fix it eitehr.

Downloaded memtest 2.0.  Boot without himem.sys, type memtest, and the
computer reboots itself.  Same on the good computer.  Boot with himem.sys
and it complains about himem.sys.  No files except system files on the
floppy boot disk.  No hard drive in one of the computers, and it spends a
few minutes looking for it.

What else might we test?  Is CMOS bad?  Online help suggested fdisk, virus 
check and low-level format.
--------------------------
I found another laptop on the shelf which should work for BL3.  486SL 12MB
RAM 25MHz 87MB hard drive of which I can spare linux 40 or maybe 50 (we
are saving some PCMCIA and utilities in DOS and want to use a few other
DOS programs and store photos there as this is color VGA).  Would a 12MB
swap file help?  Can't spare 24MB.  I never had problems without a swap
file/partition except once when loading a large file (SW71 kernel source),
and I would not be compiling on this computer or even running Opera.  I 
have already learned to fix a crash with e2fsck.  

This computer has a PS/2 trackball that sometimes works (I don't need it
the way I use linux), a fussy floppy drive (reads floppies that it
formatted but often not those formatted elsewhere - would cleaning make
any difference?)  and the CMOS battery is dead.  The regular battery is
missing.  Boots and reloads defaults to CMOS anyway.  If it all worked it 
would not have been given to us.

PCMCIA modem (14.4 that we got working once in Win 3.1, and from elsewhere
a possibly working 28.8K) - do you need specific drivers for linux PCMCIA
or are they generic?  The Toshiba also came with a 28.8K PCMCIA modem.
We have external modems.

To boot with loadlin, do I use the 2-floppy or the loop version of BL3? I
don't have room to expand the loop version on here if I make a linux
partition unless I make it 15MB smaller (then convert that to swap file or 
wait and use it for DOS and add the DOS programs after doing linux).

I cannot copy fs.img from another computer via ethernet because the
computer has no ethernet port (and I dont' have a PCMCIA ethernet card).  
I already proved repeatedly that fs.img won't copy properly via parallel 
port (llpro or plip).  Have not tried slip on it.

We have a spare 120MB drive that might fit in here and will check when we
look for the battery.  1993.  Parts are 1990.