Hi all,
I have a very old Dell Laptop Latitude CP M166ST. I'd like to install Linux system but it can not boot from my Linux CD or even Windows.

In the boot bios setting has only two options: boot from diskette or hard drive.

Can anyone help me to solve this problem please!
P/s: i dont have a floppy drive for that laptop.

you could update the BIOS so it can boot from the cd

erm... i first misread your post...
you are in for quite an adventure if you do not have any bootable removable storage...
you got usb legacy there by any chance? you can install a boot image on a usb flash drive or something... or even a mini distro like DSL which fits on a 64mb stick.
i dont suppose you can update your bios right now anyway since it doesnt boot to anything.
good luck with this, keep me posted, i like this kinda project.
PS i had a floppy drive for mine, so thats how i managed my installs.
*EDIT*
this is the last release of the bios... they did not list the changelog so i cant tell you if they added the cdrom boot capability.
http://support.dell.com/support/down...id=-1&impid=-1

Thanks guyz,
Ok, so I got your ideas. If update the Bios is really help to solve the problem "boot by CD". I have one idea:

First, take off my hard drive and put it in another laptop for windows 98 installation.

Then, plug it back to my old laptop. It takes a while to detect the new hardware in my old laptop

Then, update the the bios.

Last step, boot from Linux CD and install it :-)

If updating the Bios helps, I think it should be great!

you don't have an os on it currently?

No, I don't have any OS on it currently.

And can anyone suggest me which Linux system is the best for my old laptop Dell CP (ram 64-128mb)

I use only words and chatting.

I hope it can support my LinkSys Wireless-G Card.

Thank you,

I haven't had this much fun installing linux on such a system! What you can do though, don't install windows yet. Just run fdisk(windows version), partition the drive and do sys E:(whatever your drive letter is for the hard drive as 2nd drive). Copy your bootable windows to the drive. Put the drive back in your laptop and boot to the hard drive. If you're familiar with the command line you can cd to the i386 folder and run setup.exe and it will install windows for you. It's been a few years since I've done this trick on a few computers that old. But it works. After windows is installed, you can upgrade your bios if you can find it available for your laptop.

If you rather not install windows, you can use similar methods like the above to install linux. At best, you'll need to prep a partition in FAT32, install grub to the mbr and copy your linux cd directly to the partition. Use grub to boot the linux cd from the hard drive. I don't remember the exact details of how I did this, but if you browse the forum here, there is a detailed sticky on how to accomplish this method.

Very nice :-)
I'll try it today and let you know if it works for me ^^ Thank you!

After updating the Bios, I cannot turn the laptop on. Too bad! Any idea?

Well, I installed DSL system successful. But not sure about the wireless card and sound card.

congrats!!!
DSL is very very basic stuff, meaning you gotta install more packages from Debian repositories.
there is Synaptic package manager that runs on DSL (icon on the desktop by default) that will let you access those repositories... by default you will be downloading from old-stable repository (Debian Woody) but you can add more recent repositories, but keep in mind that once you start updating, the distro will explode in size right before your eyes, to satisfy the dependencies.
tell us what wireless card you got so we could give you more assistance on it.
also tell us the name of the sound chipset your machine has... i honestly dont remember what it is and its not listed on dell.com...

Hi,
From the bios, I can see the Audio Controller is Crystal 4237B

The video controller is NeoMagic 2160 (I'm not sure how I can check they have driver already or not on DSL Linux)

My wireless card is LinkSys Wireless-G WPC54G ver 1.2

Thank you guys,

P/s: i'm very new in Linux (installing DSL is my first time), so I'm not sure how to install driver on it. Please give me more detail :-). I'll learn the commands. It's interesting. (Sorry the for the bad English ^^).