I work for an organization that build computers that are given to college students. First off, here is a typical system I am using.

pentium 120 MHZ
5 GB hd
98 MB ram
8x cd-rom

Here is my problem. The bios on these computers does not recognize the cd-rom drive, so i need to be able to boot from a floppy. Does anyone know of a workaround that I can use? I have been working with mandrake 10.0, but I have heard that fedora might have a little more hardware support, and from what i have seen looks to be a little more user-friendly, so i would like to find a way to use fedora. There was a post on here that contained a link to a diskimage that would fit on a floppy, but when i tried it, it said the cd did not contain a fedora image on it. I would greatly appreciate any help on this problem.

Can you download the ISOs to a fat32 filesystem and make an install boot floppy?

Installing from a Hard Drive

# Red Hat & Fedora links
FedoraNEWS.ORG
Did you download? See: Installing from a Hard Drive
Red Hat 9 Rescue Mode
Red Hat 8 Rescue Mode
The Fedora HOWTO explains the different software managers.
Red Hat Linux Manuals
Get your mp3 support here
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
Easier software management: apt4rpm - Red Carpet
Red Hat 8.0 Tips & Tricks
# Red Hat 7.3 down configuration commands
setup leads to several configuration tools
# Red Hat 7.3 up configuration commands
Configure soundcard:
redhat-config-soundcard
Configure X server:
redhat-config-xfree86
Configure network:
redhat-config-network
Manage software:
redhat-config-packages
Red Hat Linux 8.0 Package Management Tool
Red Hat 9.0 Package Management Tool
Manage users
redhat-config-users
# Handling NTFS
New Technology FileSystem (NTFS) HOWTOs
Linux NTFS project

Think this might help:

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=19995

The bootdisk.img for FC2 is way too big for a floppy, but it was possible in FC1 if I recall. I suppose you could install FC1 using the image (and your choice of NFS/FTP/HTTP). Then to install FC2, you could do a install from hard drive installation with your FC2 iso's. You would have to also copy the FC2 bootdisk.img to its own parttion and modify your FC1 grub.conf to chainload to it. Incredible hassle, but technically it would probably work. That is about all I can suggest. Either than, or get your CDROM to work :-)

Sorry it has been so long since I posted on this thread. Been working from a different office the last week and a half. We have been playing around with Suse 9.1 and are still trying out different distros to see which ones might work best with these older computers we are having to use. I really appreciate the help. It is awesome to have this kind of help for people who are trying to get completey away from windows. Thanks again, and I'm sure I'll have more questions for you guys later.