hi,

I have my Panasonic CF-35: 266MHZ, 160MB RAM, 6GB. Someone would say "ideal for learning Linux" well in my opinion it is. The problem is that the laptop is almost 11 years old and its CD-ROM is dead. Well it does not read burned CD's, sometimes it accepts oryginal CD's (eg. from magazine). I've once installed Red Hat 7.1 on it (when the CD was still working quite good) but now I want to install it again (or maybe different distro) but thats not my issue. Till I buy (find) new CD the only option to install any system is via USB or via PLIP.

I think it is possible (but I didnt fount it yet) to boot system from floppy with USB support and to install system from USB stick. If someone did something like this or knows link to sort of HOWTO I'll be grateful.

I also have external PCMCIA CD-ROM (never used by me but working).

So what will be easier: PCMCIA or USB in my case.

PS. sorry for my english, I'm Polish ;]

http://paulski.com/zpages.php?id=1812

explains 2 main issues

1) will your bios allow a boot order to be to PCMCIA

its best you read your motherboard manual or just go into it....and see what the options are please.

2) the link also explains that smartbootmanager could be used...floppy to boot then select optical drive.....but again there may be bios limitations on that.

so why don't you just plug in pcmia device and see if you can change boot order to it?

info about this MB and also about the laptop is very limited. BIOS allows me to set boot order to:

1. FDD->CD->HDD
2. FDD->HDD
3. HDD->FDD

there is nothing in BIOS about PCMCIA

Ill try as soon as I make wire to connect the CD to power supply

OK, the external CD is working under win98, XP, and PcLinuxOS (I'm writing from it now) its FreeCom PcCard.

I've downloaded

http://paulski.com/utilguides/sbm.exe

extracted to floppy, booted and ... nothing, no PCMCIA found.

I've found this:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...all-cdrom.html

I've made boot disks using rawrite with boot.img, pcmcia.img and pcmciadd.img as suggested in article. The system boots kernel is extracted. But when choosing source packages -> Local CD ROM, system asks me if I have driver disk. Is it asking for disk made by rawrite with pcmciadd.img?? Because when I'm putting that disk it does nothing an I'm asked again about the driver.

I've also tried with

http://ecg.mit.edu/george/pcmcia-inst/libretto.html

But none of included PCMCIA driver worked with my CD.

Any ideas??

smartboot mgr floppy fails.

those pcmia boot floppies are to allow a red hat install....not sure if that is what you want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYSLINUX
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index...SLINUX_Project

talks about a diff way to try and get to usb device
also mentions PXE booting.

Leaping ahead...a cd only costs about $30.

2) a number of distros still have boot floppies that allow install over network. but again you may come up against whether your network driver will be on the floppy....no network no connection....no more install.

well even if, that would be something unfortunately PCMCIA support is aimed mostly at PCMCIA SCSI and LAN. Well at least at boot time.

yes I know, at Allegro (kind of polish Ebay) it's even cheaper but I'm not sure if all CD's are standard build and will fit my slot. Other issue is that it has to fit my box-case with specific connector used only in Panasonic. I have to spend more time to look for it.

I was thinking about that and ... im still hesitate: buy a new/used CD-R/CD-RW or with the same price buy a PCMCIA-LAN adapter like Xircom

But someone can say that I already have CD (external) and it will mostly work fine under installed OS (like mentioned earlier under M$) and network adapter would be handy any time under any OS.

Well with PCMCIA-IDE I give up. Tomorrow will try with external HDD via USB. It should be very like the USB stick install. If it fails there is always PLIP

aus9 thank you for your advise and help

sorry for multi post

well i could not resist dealing with that PCMCIA so I've booted from Partboot fouded at

http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/tshiono/partboot-usb/

when I put the card into slot there is a hi pitch beeb (the card was connected) and then low pitch beeb (the card was not recognized/driver hadn't been loaded). The console gives me some info :

the same thing with slot 1

in M$ OS the IRQ used by slots are 10 and 5.

So the problem is with IRQ i think. Now I'm trying to solve it out.

I'd setup a Knoppix 3.8 to 5.1 CD on another machine. Start Knoppix terminal server. Get a GPXE floppy for your card. Boot to the floppy and let the terminal server boot to knoppix via what was called etherboot. It is the most simple I know of. Some of the Knoppix versions has the terminal server issue. I know the the latest 5.1 cd works. The 5.2 and 5.3 dvd have a bug.

jefro thx for info but I dont have any ethernet card as we speak. If thats what you mean.

Well I've managed to boot from floppy and install from CD. The ditro was Mandrake 9.2. I made the boot floppy only with pcmcia.img, after boot <ENTER>, system booted,...,PCMCIA support was loaded and the LED from the CD lit (smile appeared on my face), waited until I was asked from where to install, CDROM was my choice, the CD disk started to spin. YEAH. Whole installation took approx. 1h till 1st boot from HDD. But after that again I could not access the CD. Like with PARTBOOT - hi beep, and low beep. Then I had great idea. Some years ago when I was using RH 7.1 I had problems with Yamaha Sound card. The only way to have a sound was to set the right IRQ and port. So I went to BIOS and set everything I could to PnP Auto. It solved my problem with accessing the CD from Mandrake. And also it helped with PARTBOOT.

So OK I have the access to external CD and what next. At this moment I can only copy THE RIGHT CD BOOT DISK to HDD or from USB. But what if the distro is i.e. on 3CD's. Each CD is approx. >650MB that makes 2GB space on HDD. That is too large. Especially when I need it on 2nd partition. Even if I still need right floppy to boot from and witch will run installer from ISO file.

PS. can mod edit the title of the thread to "linux installation without CD"

I modified the title per your request.

I am lost, sorry.

You mention installation...which sounds fine....then you mention copy cd....which is not good.

Did Mandrake install or did you merely copy the cd to the hard drive?

jtshaw- thank you very much

aus9 - let me explain some things:

1. I did install MDK 9.2. Booted from floppy boot made with pcmcia.img, and installed using PCMCIA-CD.

2. I don't want that MDK because after HDD boot it uses all from 160MB RAM

3. So I wanted to install DSL. I had to make new floppy boot disk. But after boot I was dropped to "very limited shell". So using PARTBOOT I've copied KNOPPIX dir from DSL LIVE-CD to my HDD. Booted again and after 1 min DSL was running. So I've installed it on the HDD so I can boot directly to installed DSL.

4. Writing :

I meat that some distros like DSL can be installed from precopied CD-image on HDD. But these distros are using mostly 3 or more CD's. So I would need approx. 2GB on HDD just for CD image. And off course dedicated floppy boot disk.

So what I (and other users) need is a universal floppy boot disk to boot from and witch correctly detect external devices and will pass the installation to specified media.

PS. DSL on my CF-35 runs just great.
PPS. I'll try to install a bigger distro using dedicated floppy boot disk and my 40GB USB HDD.

ok understand.

next distro try puppy ....Yes, Puppy Linux is yet another Linux distribution. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full featured. Puppy boots into a 64MB ramdisk, and that's it, the whole caboodle runs in RAM. Unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, Puppy in its entirety loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly. Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. It can even use a multisession formatted CD-R/DVD-R to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all!

http://www.puppylinux.com/

2) IMHO puppy....aussie made...is more refined but here are some others to consider
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...&status=Active

Hmm ... Puppy you say. Well I don't say no. These days there are so many light distros that it makes headache.

Well yesterday evening I made another try with RH 7.1 and voila it's alive . Silly me at 1st time I was booting from 'boot.img' and during boot passed to the kernel option "linux dd" and then I was trying to install the pcmcia driver with 'pcmciadd.img'.

All what was needed was a boot disk made with 'pcmcia.img' and disk made with 'pcmciadd.img'. No extra option to kernel just <ENTER>. After boot system asked me to put the driver disk so I did so. And after a moment the CD was spinning.

Man is learning from his mistakes.