floppy install of slack 9: help?
 

i got this old dell latitude XPi P90D from my parents and i'm trying to install slackware 9.0 on it, but i'm at a loss for how to install using only a floppy drive. i've gotten to the installer going (booting from bare.i boot disk and using the 2 rootdisks), partitioned and designated the drives under setup, but i don't know how to actually install from floppy, as there are no choices to install from floppy under the source media selection menu.

one of the options is to install via NFS (i don't know a damned thing about that) and the others seem to be inapplicable to my situtation (cd-rom, hard drive partition and pre-mounted directory). i guess i could learn to install via NFS, but this laptop only has a pcmcia 33.6K modem, serial port and parallel port, so i'm confused about how to do it. if this thing had an ethernet card, i might be in business, but i'm stumped for right now.

suggestions?

thx for reading,
y-p

I'm not sure if you can install Slack 9.0 using only floppy disks, but you can install Debian using floppies. Debian website give you a run down on all the disk you would need, a total of 25 floppy disks, I believe.

If you know someone with an external cd drive would be the best thing to try first.

Good luck!

Actually if you have high speed access to the internet you can install debian using 4 floppies, downloading the rest.

I had a similar situation with an OLD toshiba. I used a pcmcia ethernet card and Tom's root/boot to connect to a friend's network, then (using wget) I downloaded the A, N, and D directories from Slack. Then using the Slack boot and root disks, I installed what I needed to get up and running, then installed the rest with pkgtool. If you don't have broadband, you can just connect to another computer. But you'll really need the ethernet card, and with most people going wireless these days, you can find the older cards pretty cheap.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

[edit] I don't know about your computer, but with my toshiba (4MB RAM) I had to use the lowmem.i bootdisk [/edit]

thx a lot for your suggestions guys, but i think i'm gonna go w/ the acquisition of a pcmcia card. i just got a wireless network working in my apartment, so i'll look into a wireless card (if they're not too expensive). does anyone have suggestions for a linux-friendly wireless pcmcia card?

thx,
y-p

I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think you can do a network install of Slack over a wireless network. I may be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the network and pcmcia disks don't come with drivers for wireless cards. If it is possible, please post a link or an explanation.

now that i think about it, i'm pretty sure that you can't do it over wireless b/c of the issue you just noted. there is a disk for getting a pcmcia ethernet card working, but i believe that there is no disk for the wireless (the drivers would be too big, i think). the disks are available at

ftp://ftp.cerias.purdue.edu/pub/os/s...rent/rootdisks

sorry to disappoint about the wireless. maybe this is something that could be added to slackware, a wireless card driver on disk?

sorry to disappoint,
y-p

It may be possible to create a wireless card driver floppy yourself...but I would imagine that would be difficult. Wireless install support would be a good thing to be added to the next release of Slackware. Especially considering how wireless networks have taken off recently.