Hi, first post here =)

Ive been trying to install slackware 10.1 on a thinkpad 560. The 560 has an external floppy drive that I can boot from, and a external CD drive connencted bi an IBM IDE PCMCIA card in the top slot.

I boot via floppy drive, using bare.i install.1 install.2 floppy disks in that order. I then run the pcmcia command, and use the pcmcia.dsk diskette. Everything goes fine, the slackware CD in the drive starts to spin. After it finishes spinning, I hit enter. I have setup the partitions, but the 560 cant find the CD drive to install from when i select 'target media'

Can anyone please help me find hte CD drive ?

i had that problem once. I think i mounted the cd manually to get around it. btw slackware 10.2 has been out for a while and slack 11 will be out soon grab one of those. in your case i think the drive will be considered a scsi so scd0 you could link them with something like
"ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/hdd1" and then choose that drive when it asks for what the source is.

does this then need to be mounted ? if so how do i add it to fstab ?

you don't have to add it to fstab to be mounted, you could do "mount -tiso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom" (or /dev/hdd1, it won't matter if you linked them)

to add it to fstab add this line
again it doesn't matter if you use /dev/hdd1 if they are linked.

I would try to make sure that the pcmcia cdrom is detected as /dev/scd0 before i edited fstab that way you don't have to go back an edit it again.

to do this look in /var/log/dmesg or /var/log/messages (slackware)
"cat /var/log/dmesg | grep scsi"

if it doesn't have a drive designation then its almost certianly scd0

it says

"mount point /mnt/cdrom does not exist"

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

/dev/sdc0 is not avalid block device

It is prob sda1 not sdc0 (ScsiDiskApartition1)

mount: special device /dev/sda1 does not exist

when you plug in the pcmcia cdrom, what output is in /var/log/dmesg ?

Apr 3 10:38:01 (none) syslog.info -- MARK --

looks like you need to compile a driver, did you install the kernel source along with fedora?

Not using fedora, from looking around the net I heard that slackware was the best for thinkpads.

I havent installed anything yet, its running from floppies booted into the RAM. I did use a pcmcia.dsk floppy and followed the instructions, but that doesnt seem to have done very much.

Im trying to install slackware 10.1 via the pcmcia CD drive.

i should have re-read the first post. If the kernel finds the cdrom after you go through the floppy disks, there has to be a drive designation. try mounting /dev/hdc1 or /dev/hdb1.

neither of those are in fstab or mtab. I dont know how to edit those files so that i can mount stufff :S