How do I install Suse 9 Pro onto a laptop only a PCMCIA CDRom & doesn't boot from it?
 

I am trying to install Suse 9 onto my Dell L400 L-top but I only have a PCMCIA CD ROM and I can only boot from a Floppy with MSDOS drivers for the PCMCI.... drive. I also don't understand much of your lingual so you have to tell me in english as I am only just trying to get going with Linux and abandon Winclose.

What ever it is I need it able to be done from Win as I don't have linux running yet....

If you have a high speed Internet connection then you can download a small portion of the operating system and it will ftp down the rest. You will need to download 5 floppy disk images and just create the disks and then ftp down the rest of the os. A suse mirror in you area is ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk and if you read the file ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.sus...nt/boot/README and ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.sus...ent/README.FTP these files should help. The ultils needed to create the floppy disks are in directories under ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.sus.../i386/current/ and this is the same place to point the installer when it asks for the ftp site (I think). Good Luck,

JD

I'm American and have been told that I dont speak English very well, but I will try to help. ;)

JDandy makes a good suggestion, you can also put the hard drive into a desktop computer if you have an adapter and then install Linux, then put the drive back into the laptop. That is what I have done on my old laptops (one didnt have a floppy drive or CD-rom, so that was about the only option).

I had the same issue. My Fujitsu laptop had a PCMCIA CDRW and USB floppy. I had another desktop, where I had Suse 9.0 already running. So I created the suse boot disk and module disks ( as they call it ) [4 of them] which has 'drivers' for PCMCIA/USB/SCSI & network.
Then I booted with the floopy and it will ask you to insert the other floppies in succession. at some point it will start reading the PCMCIA CRROM, so keep the SUSE CDROM in it. then you can continue from there....

[make sure you tell thelaptop to boot from the floppy]

redrobin77.

Great workaround idea because I'm coming across the same problem with an old Fujitsu and an attempted install of RH9. Might I ask what adapter you are using/suggest for popping the laptop HD inside a desktop? Inquiring minds would like to know.:confused: