Installation of Deep-Water in old computer previously with win95
 

Hello! I'm new to this forum and to Linux as well!

I have this very old PC (Compaq 4550) which has only 48MB in RAM and a 4Gb HD. I stopped using it a while ago and now I would like to install Linux in it.

I know I should install a very small linux. I've already downloaded deep-water, alinuxos and small linux.

I thought I might try first with deep-water. So I burnt the ISO (as a cd image, so there's no problem there), changed my bios settings to boot first from CD. But after I put the CD in the CD-ROM, the computer just doesn't recognize it and starts normally with win95.

Can anyone guide me on how to install deep-water? Or maybe recommend any other distribution suitable for my very old pc? Thanks a lot!!!

How old is the CD-ROM drive? Depending on it's age, it may not work regardless of firmware settings. Many old-old CD-ROM drives do not recognize modern CD-ROM formats.
Did you use a 650MB (standard) blank media? Or did you use a 700MB (extended) blank media? If you used the 700MB media, try it with a 650MB media to see if it gives the same result.

Check to see if there is a floppy boot image on the CDROM, and use a dd like tool to write the image to the floppy, and boot from that.

Here's a link for a dos based floppy image writer called rawrite. http://www.tux.org/pub/dos/rawrite

You may also want to check out Yoper - it's not as small as those you listed, however, it does pre-link all the binaries for the processor type you are installing on, and I've found it to be a reasonably sound beginner distribution. You can find it at http://www.yoper.org

Thanks
 

Yeah! Actually that was the problem. I used a rewritable 210mb CD, and my CD-ROM drive is just too old for RW media.

I will try Yoper =)

Thank you VERY much for your help!!

Hi, you may want to try vector linux for your old PC

Ok, I'm actually open to any suggestions. I downloaded Yoper already but I had a but of trouble installing it in my old PC (not in the new one though), so I might as well give Vector Linux a try. Thanks!

I did a full install of Slackware 10.2 with 2.6.13 kernel on an old IBM laptop with 80 M of ram and 4 gig harddrive. I also installed the same on an old Gateway desktop computer with only 32M ram. It runs quite well on both machines, admittedly a bit slow.:)