Linux on a pretty old lap with no cdrom, may be
 

ssup?:

i have an old 760L ibm think pad wich has 32mb of Ram , 800Mb of hard disk (i know iknow there are flash drives with more space ) 95Mhz of pure power, and an infrared interface (ok i only mention this to showoff a little) and i want to dust off this lap and use it ( if it's possible ) with linux i'm thinking about dam small linux or maybe knoppix (i dont think so either but there is nothing to lose by trying) ok as you may notice there's no cd-rom dirve; but i also have and external cdr burning drive with a paralell port interface (is rather old too but still works) so after all of this shit here comes the question so be ready.

if there any chance to activate or detect the external cd drive with a bootable linux floppy and install a distro from there? if that so, how can i make a floppy bootable, and wich modules should load? or if there are any ready floppy distros out there wich one of them are good for doing what i want?.

So no network adapter I guess? Pocket Linux is a single floppy distro with a fair chance of finding any network adaptor and attaching to a network.

Otherwise if you are really stuck with your parallel port - maybe first try and figure out what you need to access this thing from a full linux distro. Old Iomega ZIP drives attached through the parallel port with the ppa driver (I think). Maybe your CDR is similar? Otherwise try and borrow an old Zip drive maybe - they were quite popular.

If you know how to make a boot floppy (I've done it in the past but don't remember how) then you are in business. Otherwise you could check www.distrowatch.org (search on 'floppy' for type of distrobution) for something suitable.

PS: for boot floppies see

http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Lin...dBootDisk.html

or any number of other google boot floppy linux items.

C'mon... You're in luck there ;)
 

'... 95 MHz of pure power'

Yup :) Lucky you - at least if you compare to the 50 MHz of canned heat i've got tucked underneath the hood of my IBM 701C (The 'Butterfly').

The 760 is perfectly able to run a Linux. No prob whatsoever.

But.

Trying to install off one of those arcane media you mention simply isn't worth the agony. IMHO.

Do yourself a favour and go buy a pcmcia networking card - one of those old 10 mbit wired PCMCIA cards. Not a PCcard (i don't believe your laptop supports PCcards). You'll most likely have to buy a used one, as 10 mbit wired ethernet-PCMCIA cards are no longer sold in stores.

Go for a NE2000 clone. I've got one from Trendnet (TE210 it's called) and it works like a charm with e.g. Debian bootfloppies. Expect to pay around $15.

Hook it up to an internet connection and run your favourite bootfloppy-set. Off you go.

As for the usability of such a system, i'd say the word 'not' applies pretty well. Even if you prune back the setup, choose low-ressource-window managers, and avoid the real office applications, you'll most likely find the system slow at best.

Going Text-Mode works wonders, though. Dispense with X, and you've got yourself a nice workbench for text editing, network debugging/sniffing, webserver etc.