I've got an old Compaq LTE 5280 laptop that I'd like to put Slackware on. It's got a P 120 cpu, 32 megs memory, 1.2 gig hard drive. I've got both a floppy drive, and a CD drive for it, but they are the multibay / swappable style, and they're not hot-swappable. It does not boot from CD, so I'll have to boot from floppy. It does have PCMCIA slots, and I've got a NIC for it, so I figured I could install via NFS, but I've never done that before.

What I've tried so far:

boot: bareapm.i - boots fine
root disk: color.gz - drive is partitioned
pcmcia.dsk - the light on my NIC turns on
network.dsk - No luck detecting a network, this is where I get stuck

As far as NFS goes I know nothing. I set up an NFS share folder on my Redhat 9 box, but I don't know what to do with it beyond that. I've downloaded the Slackware 9.1 ISOs, so do I copy those to the NFS share?

About the NIC:
- Should I get a different NIC since the network.dsk isn't detecting anything?
- If so, what's a card that should be supported?
- The card I've got is a 3Com Etherlink III. It uses a dongle and a couple pins are screwy.
- When I had Windows 95 on the machine the NIC did work.

Other options:
- I do have a parallel zip drive lying around, but I don't have any zip disks so I'd have to buy some.

What I'd like the computer to do:
- I'd like the CD drive to work once an OS is installed - I use CD more than floppy
- I'd like to get a Wireless card for taking the computer around campus
- Internet browsing
- Programming - C++ and C mostly so I need GCC and editor - Vim preference
- Ideally I'd like the audio on the laptop to work, but I don't have a ton of use for it
- I'd like a GUI, but it's not completely required - Fluxbox is appealing

Other notes:
- I'm almost a complete Noob. I've got a Redhat 9 box running simply because it was really simple, no extra tweaking required.
- If I'm given good directions I can follow them and figure things out.

Well, if you can boot to a floppy, there is a boot floppy called (I think) "Multi Boot Agent" that allows you to first boot to the floppy, and then from there select a device to boot from.

It will allow you to boot to the CD drive, USB, HDD, whatever. It doesn't matter if your BIOS supports it or not.

Unfortunately, I have only read about it here on the boards, and I don't know the link. But it has popped up here once and awhile, so maybe somebody else will be able to provide the link you can get it from. Sorry.

Okay, I've got Slackware 9.1 installed. Now I'm trying to get X to work. I've poked around in XF86Config, and haven't gotten it work work yet. The error I'm getting is something to do with not finding a screen. I'll post my log when I get a chance.