Hi,

The notebook is old, and would be ideally suited for a console based stable debian.

It has the processor AMD K6-2 380 MHz (Data Bus Speed: 66 MHz)
Ram 32MB
Hard-drive: 4.3 GB
Cdrom


Problem. The usb from the bios cannot boot. It never popup to any boot, so it shall be activated using a flopppy disk.

and finally are broken:
- the floppy reader
- the cdrom reader

There is no bootable OS in the harddisk in it.

It has a pcmcia reader, but well, it does not help much either.

Any ideas how to install Debian on it on the hdd, to make it boot linux?

thanks

Here is a option http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...4/#post1614000

Missed the fact that there was no OS on the laptop. Get a converter to put the harddisk from the laptop in a desktop put a OS on it and put it back in the laptop.

Does it have a wired network card on it? Then a pxe installation would be better, but you need another pc to provide it with the relevant stuff.

On the other hand, the laptop is far too old and even a console only setup would make it suffer

no wireless card.

but not possible since the CDROM reader is broken. However maybe it could be done...
this cdrom player can read a bit but not long


if there is a cdrom that allows to give the capability of booting from the usb


I know that there is a floppy disk that can do that ... so why not on a cdrom. this 1-2 mb cdrom could be maybe read, and it could maybe start the boot of debian on pendrive installer

I try again this alternative: http://download.plop.at/files/bootmn...-createiso.zip

PLoP Boot Manager on cdrom might be too big. Is there smaller in size?

Ok it took about 30 min to read. I have managed to get plop manager to boot from this old cdrom player.


But man, where is the disto for AMD K6?


http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

here it states thtat debian supports amd k6, but it looks like not true, no?
http://www.gutefrage.net/frage/welch...1gb-festplatte


I see that debian provides an image for 486, but how to make DEBIAN USB PENDRIVE SQUEEZE FOR 486 bootable, or debian proposes this great thing?
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/linux-image-2.6-486


Debian does not write anything about 486: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual


Like always, back to that good old Slackware, at least they propose a 486. Pitty, since I like debian.


help

So if plop boots from a CDR... why not just burn an iso image to a CDR and just boot and install Debian...?

You need an i386 .iso. There is a 486 kernel, which is the correct kernel for your CPU (which is not a true 586).

thank you ... I will download the things. Isnt there a script that does create automatically the img to put on the pendrive ?

http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dist...urrent/images/

As for puting creating a USB stick with the installation image, have a look at this.

Besides the methods described in the guide, you can take the easy way and use dd to transfer the iso image to the USB stick, like this:

Be careful with the command above because if you use another drive you will destroy all the data in it (in fact, it will destroy everything you have in the usb stick).

The only thing is, I'm not sure if Debian will work on a machine with such low specs. Maybe a CLI only system could work, but I'm not sure about it. At least it will be an educational experience

I don't think you can use a usb cdrom drive yet with plop. Well, last time I read the web page is said it couldn't.

I'd take the drive out and load it on a different system.

I don't get how you are booting it. You said floppy is bad, cd drive is bad and it can't boot to usb. How are you booting it?

Pcmcia is almost impossible to get working. I think only a handful of IBM's and maybe one or two HP's ever worked.

If it booted to pxe it would be the second best way to go.

Wonder how hard it would be to use a CF to ide adapter to boot to? http://www.wezm.net/technical/2010/0...nd-netboot-me/

no pxe networking boot. too old.


I managed !

I used this iso cdrom of 2-3mb . http://download.plop.at/files/bootmn...-createiso.zip

took long to make it read.

Then I clicked onto usb under plop

dd as above allowed to create the pendrive . notice do it onto target /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1

and then it launch the debian installer. No problem. Took long , but now, it is a Linux running Debian.

Thank you all !!!!!