Hi

I have acquired an aged slimline Thinkpad on which I wish to install SuSE Linux.

I have a mirror of the SuSE distribution on my local server and my normal way of installing is by booting from CD, then running the rest of the installation over NFS.

This works fine with every machine I have tried, including a Toshiba laptop. However, the Thinkpad has neither CD nor floppy drive. I only have a PCMCIA network card (works with Toshiba network installation), so I can't burn a boot EPROM.

Attempt #1 - Put hard disc from Thinkpad into Toshiba and do installation. Works great - on the Toshiba. Gets to end of kernel boot in Thinkpad and then freezes.

Attempt #2 - Repeat above, using older desktop machine. Same result.

My next attempt was going to be to write the contents of the SuSE boot CD (boot.iso) to the Thinkpad hard disc (using desktop machine). However, I have no idea how I would boot it since the image uses Isolinux which I don't think is designed for hard disc booting...

Suggestions ?

Cheers

Matthew Smith

Well I am a newbie myself. But what I would do is to get an external drive just for the initial installation. Either you have a friend who has one or you buy one (which you could return as non functional ;-) )

Good luck

Sadly, not an option. This is a vintage unit and I have tried to obtain a suitable external floppy through Ebay. Thought I found one, took a month and a half to arrive and found it had totally the wrong connector Being in the 'Bush', borrowing isn't an option which is how I have found myself moving down the "initial boot from hard disc" path.

Thanks, however, for your suggestions.

Cheers

Matthew

Hmmm,

Well another idea. I used to sue the old MS-DOS commands to copy data via the serial port. This was possible without the need of a floppy to install any additional software (I think the command was called interlink or so. See http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/intersvr.htm and others)
This method could be used to copy the small image files for setup to your laptop. I know that such files exist at least for mandrake.
I do however not have personal experience with al that.

BTW Best regards to Australia. It is indeed a lovely place.