2 questions: BIOS/FLOPPY
 

!st question is concerning my floppy drive...

its /dev/fd0

but i cant view it, or use it.
what do i have to do in order to be able to put a new bios version on it?

and my second question:
I have this POS eMachine "eTower 600ls"
i've searched everywhere and can not find a bios upgrade anywhere!!
the reason i want to get a bios upgrade is because the cd rom drives are not functional during its startup..i cant boot off them, and bios doesnt even read them...
any ideas as to what i can do inorder to get linux on this emachine?
is there another way other than a iso on a cd rom?

As to your first question you MAY be trying to mount the wrong device--in some distro's you mount a floppy with /dev/floppy and in others /dev/fd so that might fix that. but i don't use your distro so this may not work

As for your bios no clue but you might check to see that you are using the proper plug order on the ide cables and that your drives are hard switched to their positions and check the connections on the mainboard and while your there remember no cd-rom on the same chanle as a hard drive :-))

I dobt it but your bios might let you boot from network so you could install that way or if you can boot from floppy you could do a net install from there too.

yeah i know all about cable orientation. that wasnt the problem. BIOS does reconize the drives no matter what...even the hard drive, even though ultimatly it will boot from the hard drive and thats where i get the error "kernel panic" because the drive has been set up on another computer...i didnt think that would be a problem but it is. i think. if anyoneknows how to get it to work regaurdless let me know.

concerning the cd rom install:
i never installed from the network before, there is the option to do that so i think im gonna give it a go.
first time for everything right?


if anyone has some tips to go about a network install please dont hold back!!

thanks in advance!

i figured it out...the ide slot on the board is bad....so im gonna network install( or at least try to) and its gonna have to be without any functioning cd rom drives untill one day i get a controller card or something...
thanks again...