Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> 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.

Smart Boot Manager installed in the mbr could well get it booting from CD.
I've only run across one machine thus far where it didn't work.  It gives
a boot menu when you start the machine that should show the CD as an item
you can select to boot from.  Great little program.

Sounds to me like your HD problems could be due to erroneous parameters
entered for it in the BIOS.  Did you check that?  It's one possibility
anyway.

> 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.

I'd say try slip.  You can also use a modem as a sort of network
connection (direct connection to another machine).  I've seen descriptions
for doing this, and I think Steven has described it at some point too, but
have not tried it myself.

James