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Sindi Keesan wrote (Wed evening Sept 30)


> Message from Steven
> ===================
> Sindi wrote:
> > 133MHz laptop with 48MB RAM
> >
> > Intended use is only wireless internet, with an
> > orinoco card (needs 2.4 kernel).
>
> My orinoco wireless cards do not need 2.4 kernel.
> They work fine on the 2.2.26 (using wvlan_cs).

Some orinoco cards work with wvlan and some don't.  One of my three does. 
MN-520 does not.  The DELL I think does and linksys probably not.

> > 48MB would probably run Seamonkey or Firefox
>
> I would strongly advise against trying Firefox on
> 133MHz and 48mb RAM.  It will be very, very slow.
> Horribly slow.  Don't go there.

CF is said to also run slow.  I copied over my laptop files anyway, 
including glibc 2.3.6 and Seamonkey and Firefox 2, and also copied Opera 
8.54.  And the later Abiword that works with 2.3.6.

> Opera is better.  And, of course, links2 will perform
> very well on that hardware.

It is all there.  Even elinks and lynx.  And timidity in case the sound 
can be made to work.

> > Can these cards even be partitioned to fat
>
> CF cards usually come preformatted with FAT.
>
> > and ext2 (two partitions)?
>
> Yes, you should be able to partition and format
> a CF card like an IDE harddrive.

Tried first to partition by plugging the card (in its IDE adaptor) into an 
IDE (laptop) to USB adaptor, but fdisk could not handle that.
So we used Partition Magic to reformat to ext2, which worked well.
He wanted one 4GB partition.

> Although it should be possible to run BL3 from
> a CF card, it will be tricky to get it booted.
> If you are short of time, you should consider
> installing puppy linux, since it is has an
> option for booting from CF drive.

I read about that option.

It uses 50MB RAM just to boot.  The laptop came with 16MB and he added 
32MB to the only slot.  It is maxed out.

> Cheers,
> Steven

The Armada of course had no USB port, and I did not want to try copying 
files to it via parallel cable or network cable (BL3 floppy).

After formatting, I booted my laptop with BL2 on it, with David M's 
USB-storage-capable 1-floppy linux, plugged the CF-IDE-USB card into my 
one USB port, and mounted /dev/sda1 on /mnt and my BL2 partition on /hd. 
Copied the files (it was rather slow).  Changed root password to Enter 
key.  Removed my eznet login and password.  Changed fstab to point to 
/dev/hda1. Made a swap file of 72MB.  Unplugged the card, plugged in my 
USB hard drive (sdb1) and copied Opera 8.54 and Abiword to my hard drive. 
Put back the CF-IDE-USB and unpacked Opera and installed Abiword. 
Changed from Xfbdev to SVGA server and Steven's XF86Config modified for 
8-bit color (which he said he had - my 120MHz Armada has it too).

He has I think an Armada 4120, which has its own boot floppy setup disk. 
Mine for the 1510 (in Norwegian) did not work (I think it said it was for 
the wrong model).  His would not boot from CD, and mine did not appear to 
have that option (you had the choice of hard drive, or floppy plus hard 
drive, depending on whether you deactivated floppy boot).

PQM boot floppy booted.  My partner checked it out and was getting 
controller messages when he tried to boot from floppy disk. PQM boot 
floppy booted again.  Maybe the flopppy disk has to be formatted on that 
computer (floppymeter would let us know if it is running slow or fast, but 
that requires getting linux to boot first).


We put back the CF-IDE into the hard drive slot and it would not boot.
'No operating system found'.

Then tried booting with David's 1-floppy syslinux and it would not boot 
(stopped partway).

Tried BL3.5 (modified version with nomce, for Armada) and it stopped 
partway.  LILO.

I did not try BL2 floppy boot with loadlin.

This model is said to have worked with Debian and Redhat, from normal hard 
drive.


He had to take his young daughter home to bed.  We lent her our Apple 
Emate (PDA/laptop cross) to play with since the computer intended for her 
would not boot- it uses PCMCIA memory cards for file transfer but did not 
recognize our 4MB CF card in PCMCIA adaptor.  It might need reformatting.

I suggested he put the thing into some other newer computer to see if it 
would boot and come back next week if it did.

If so, I may give him my 1510 which is set up with BL on hard drive, if it 
works with his CF card.  His came with Win98 working on it (originally 
Win95) on hard drive.

Has anyone else on this list run BL from CF card?

Sindi