Ok, I'm trying to install debian sarge on an IBM Thinkpad 560. Supposedly it's possible, as I've read about others doing it.

Here's my problem.

I have no floppy or cdrom, but the bios will boot off pcmcia. So, I am using a 128 compactflash in a pcmcia adapter.

I can get it to boot off that fine.

The problem is that when I do, it is unable to recognize my ide controller and says it lacks the kernel modules to do so.

Here is where I found the instructions on how to set up the boot device:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stab...ch04s04.html.en

I just dd'd the boot.img to /dev/sdb and it made it bootable just fine. The debian install program starts up, but it can't find the iso or any of the hard drives. dmesg returns tons of errors about being unable to find any drives.

It says on that page that I can copy "Optional kernel modules"

How do I know which modules to copy, and how do I get them, and where do I put them, and how do you tell the kernel to load them?

The ram disk environment I'm running off is extremely limited. lspci isn't even there.

Thanks.

Save me from Windows NT!