Are there any full distros of linux that can be installed via floppy (no cdrom or network). And which of these woudl run on a sub 8MB eof memory machine?

Thank you.

Full distro's? No - good greif: do you have any idea how many floppies that would be?!

I image you could get DS Linux onto a set of floppies but I don't know anyone who has done that.

I'm afraid you will have to buy beg borrow or steal a CDROM drive. (Or better a DVD rom drive.) If you know someone with such a beastie - you may be able to talk tem into letting you borrow it. For that matter, if you are neerby, I can post you one of my old CDROM drives for free!

(Actually - some very O L D linux's may still be floating around on floppy... but, again, lots of luck - don't hold your breath.)

The problem is that this machine is goign to be used in an experiment of mine. And it's one of those Compaq Prolinea machines. The monitor and cpu are one. There's no visible room for a cd-rom, and no usb port for sure. I just can't figure out how to get any thing more than a floppy-boot distro onto it. However I need some compiles on the thing.

slackware was first designed to install from floppies. obvously the new versions won't be able to run on a machine like that. www.slackware.com should have older versions, maybe around v1 or v2 will work.

Thanks, I'll have to check that out.

I have successfully installed Slackware 3.0 and 4.0 on systems using only floppies. You can get a base install with network using only floppies. To install X you will need to store the files under a compresed image spanning multiple floppies. I would STRONGLY suggest putting in a network card and doing everything beyond a basic install over the net.

The monitor and cpu are certainly not one and the same

Just because the motherboard lives in the same box as the monitor dosn't mean you cannot modify it. Like the mac classic, there is no space for an internal ide cdrom. However, you will modt likely have some sort of io port - from the box, probably scsi - you can install and scsi or parralell external drive or perhaps rs232? You may even be able to get an old one cheap since usb has pretty much taken over.

Really you want to open the box and look inside, even if you don't plan to modify it. This will help you understand what the machine is capabl of.

What is the experiment BTW?

Glad you asked.

I am going to attempt to control the lights of a model house using parallel port pgroamming, relays, etc. However from what I've read already, this can be dangerous to a motherboard, esp. to newbiews. so I'm working with old machines. I esp. like this one since it has the monitor and cpu in one box.

OK cool - then you don't need the full distribution you asked for in the first post.

Have a look at Basic Linux (2 floppies, incl. HDD & Xterm support and is still active - I think) or Floppix (Really really tiney and will run with under 8Mb RAM.)

Remember tho - you must have 386 or better to run Linux of any flavour.

(Sounds like my first computer project - 8-bit CMOS 1802 CPU with 2k RAM and 2k epROM, hexadecimal keyboard, programmed by DMA in machine code. Display was 5 seven-segment LED displays... but this thing ran a house (a real one) optimised for energy efficiency - heat, light, water and so on as well as monitoring several vat-type processes in the attached farm

Good luck... btw - you should buffer your io - that will take away most of your danger. Isolate the switches with opto-couplers and you'll avoid getting current in the wrong places. However, you may want to look at using the rs232 interface for simple switching... that is usually safer than using the parralell interface - just harder.