I have old pc without cdrom, usb and ethernet. I need to install a new distro. Is is ok just remove hdd plug it into another PC. Boot the other PC from install disk and do a normal install and plug it back to the old pc.

Will the configuration made by setup will be problematic at the other pc?

Hmm, it's a trick...but, indeed (as you suspected) there is potential trouble. Maybe an other suggestion (if possible) : install a CD-rom drive to the system. Alternatively, there are floppy-based distros around...

Luck

Thor

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I was thinking of partition 8gb drive of the old PC as
2gb -partA
6gb -partB
and use something like unetbootin to extract the iso to partA, plug it back, let partA to boot and use the installer to install the system to partB and wipe partA manually

But not sure how to set boot flags for this

Your first idea has worked for me. About the best distro for a computer that old (my opinion, of course) would be Puppy. I'd use "Wary Puppy". With the hard drive from the older computer installed by itself in the newer one, boot from the CD, and study the installation options. You, ll need to install it to the hard drive since in the older computer you won't be able to boot from the CD.

You don't say what either of the computers is, but if it is reasonably possible to install whatever connection the older computer can use to connect to the internet - on the newer computer before you install the OS it might save yo some trouble. On the other hand "Wary puppy" is pretty flexible about that.

I chose to install to the entire hard drive with what "puppy " calls something like "super floppy install". Aparently it treats your whole hard drive like a floppy. Once you get it installed it will boot from the hard drive without further intervention.

Don't do a lot of configuration until you have the drive back in the old unit. Provide it some sort of connection to the Internet. My installation was to an old laptop, and I used a pcmcia adapter to cat5. A wifi/pcmcia would have been better, but the one I had doesn't play nice with Linux, and I couldn't afford another.

"wary puppy" gives you lots of options about connecting to the internet, (and lots of other configuration options). And there is a good deal of documentation built right into the original installation of "wary puppy".

In many new distro's your idea works fine.

In some older and some new distro's the installer uses some firm settings that could affect install.

You should do it, you'd know if it doesn't work pretty quick.

If you had an OS on it, you might be able to install over serial or parallel but that would be way harder than this is worth.

I tried it with puppy linux, and I'm not sure if it worked or not
The problem is my main pc is a modern multi-core pc, and the pc I'm trying to install is a very old pc with 200mhz processor.
When I swapped back the drives, the "updating" part of the puppy boot(I'm not sure what it is updating)took half hour and I waited an extra hour at loading kernel modules part, than I gave up.

I installed win98se, I started with cd , after the first part of install it restart and starts the second part. I manually closed the pc at that restart and pluged back to the old pc, installer continued and completed fine at that old pc

I've done it in Debian as some of the older pc's won't boot without floppy support, what I did, when asked,

1.targeted for this pc (drivers)
or
2.Include all drivers

I chose include all drivers & put drive in other computer & it works.
Some of the others here can tell you how to compile custom kernel for the computer, but there's no need if you can get it operational.

Well I have done exactly that before and made it work. It did it with ubuntu. At the time I was trying to build a cluster for parallel computing not all my computer were the same either. Anyway as long as you handle the hardware ok I cant believe it would hurt very much. Good luck.

>"JonJan: LQ Newbie

>Registered: Aug 2011
>Posts: 5

>Original Poster
>Rep: Reputation: Disabled

>I tried it with puppy linux, and I'm not sure if it worked or not
>The problem is my main pc is a modern multi-core pc, and the pc I'm trying to install is a >very old pc with 200mhz processor.
>When I swapped back the drives, the "updating" part of the puppy boot(I'm not sure what it >is updating)took half hour and I waited an extra hour at loading kernel modules part, than >I gave up."

I'm sorry JonJan, I should have suggested: on your install of puppy choose right from the beginning when you are asked to choose Xorg, or Vesa: choose Vesa, and then when it finishes the boot, and asks you to accept or change the resolution choose no greater than 800x600x16 resolution. Anything bigger might be too big for the older computer. that may be why it seemed tog et stuck updating, or loading modules.

Most any PC will work with Vesa 800x600x16. If it won't, it might work with 600x480, but you probably won't be happy with that resolution, and some of the programs won't work at that. If you get it to work at either of these two resolutions, you can reset i9t once you get it booted up in the older machine.

You might try some of the suggestions her: http://pupweb.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall
or here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/

The "frugal install" is another way to install (described in some of the posts in the above links.) It can work even on a partiton or hard disk that has windows or dos installed already, and it boots from a floppy, which you can copy from the internet, and burn to a floppy on a different machine that has a floppy drive.