Okay, Ive got a laptop with a network card running windows XP and a PC with non-working Windows installed and Linux running. I have a winmodem, it doesn't work and I'm having a little bit of trouble getting it to work. Meanwhile I can't figure out how to use x-cd-roast properly nor can I access my 80GB external HD. I want to be able to either get my PC online or transfer my data to my laptop. Now that I'm done with my sob story, what all do I need (including hardware, cords, etc) to network my laptop to my PC? Any ideas on my other problems?

>Okay, Ive got a laptop with a network card running windows XP and a PC with non-working Windows installed and Linux running.

So do you want to get your files from the non-working WinDoze install onto your laptop?

>I have a winmodem, it doesn't work and I'm having a little bit of trouble getting it to work.

In WinDoze or Linux? I'm not sure a winmodem will work under Linux...

>Meanwhile I can't figure out how to use x-cd-roast properly nor can I access my 80GB external HD.

Need a little more info here. What problems are you having with x-cd-roast? Is your external HDD a USB? Do you have USB support in your distro? How is it currently formated? Have you made a dir and tried mounting it?

i.e. As root:
mkdir /external
mount -t [filetype] /dev/whatever /mountpoint
like this:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /external

try man 8 mount for full gory details. This link will help also:
http://rtfm.dyndns.info/tips/2000/10/29/16.shtml

>I want to be able to either get my PC online or transfer my data to my laptop.
If you can get the external HDD mounted, you should be golden. If you want the data from your non-working WinDoze install, you can mount that partition in the same way as above and copy to the external.

>Now that I'm done with my sob story, what all do I need (including hardware, cords, etc) to network my laptop to my PC?

To network them, you will need a NIC in each and either a cross-over patch cable or 2 straight thru cables and a hub or switch. Both need to be properly configured for IP and you should have sharing enabled on the WinDoze machine and SMB support on the Linux box. You can then "map a drive" from Linux to WinDoze. If you have an FTP server running on either, you can drop the sharing requirement and SMB and just run gftp or simlar and FTP the files to/from your Linux box.

>Any ideas on my other problems?
See inline comments...

HTH!

The external is USB and USB is supported. By [filetype] you mean the kind of file system it's formatted under? Will it work fine under FAT32? As for X-CD-Roast I don't know what to fill in as to what bus and stuff it's connected to. The WinModem isn't working under Linux. I'm trying to get the driver to work but it involves a lot of stuff I'm just plain not experienced with.

AlexXx,

yea, [flietype] is one of the following:

auto - Autodetection of filesystem, for floppy disks.
ext2 - Linux extended filesystem 2. (The current main native Linux filesystem.)
ext3 - Linux extended filesystem 3.
iso9660 - CD-ROM filesystem.
msdos - MS-DOS filesystem.
ntfs - Windows NT filesystem.
vfat - Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me filesystem
and a whole lot of others...

Can you see the device? Since your ditro is blank and you haven't said, I'm going to assume RH. You can run hwbrowser from kontrol-panel and see if you can identify the device. If you can, you should make the dir where you want it mounted and then
mount -t vfat /dev/found_device /dir_you_made
vfat filetype should do the trick.

As for the winmodem, I have not tried. Do you have a link to directions? If so, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with for you. You may want to look at http://walbran.org/sean/linux/linmod...o-7.html#ss7.1 and follow the links to the db to make sure it will work before you start recompiling and mucking around with the kernel...

Yeah the modem is supported, as far as I can read. It's an LT Modem, the tutorial is http://www.heby.de/ltmodem there. Im gonna try that stuff with my external right now. Btw, I'm on Mandrake. I'll go fill that in..

I found the device at /dev/sda and after making /external a directory I tried to mount it like you said, and tit gave me this:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda, or too many mounted file systems

Try http://www.xcdroast.org/ for xcdroast manual. They note that packages that ship with distros should not be used as they are old. Even RH 8.1beta ships with an 18 month old version of xcdroast. I would remove the version you have installed by

rpm -qa | grep xcdr to find the package name, then
rpm -e [package_name_here] to remove it. Make sure cdrtools is at least 1.11a34 by doing
rpm -qa | grep cdrtools and compare version numbers.
Grab the latest binary (and binary of cdrtools if you need it) and install by
rpm -ivh [package_name_here]. You will have to have cdrtools installed first. Looks like it has a HW detection screen that will automagically find your burner for you. You can find binaries for Mandrake 9 @ http://xcdroast.sourceforge.net/RPMS/a13/mandrake-9.0/

As for winmodem, looks like you can grab a binary and install it without recompiling kernel. Select and download the version that matches your kernel and run rpm -ivh [package-you-selected.rpm]

I tried mounting it through drakedisk but it would only allow me to mount it as an ext3 file system. Can I format it to ext3, transfer my files to it and read it on my laptop? Or possibly install Linux on my laptop so I could read it and transfer the data to the windows mount?

Try fdisk /dev/sda then enter p to see the partition tables. This will show you if you should be using /dev/sda or /dev/sda1 and which filetype. Enter q to quit. This will not damage your filesystem.

Is it already formated? You may want to format it with your laptop first (don't make it ntfs!) and then mount it in Linux. Use the fdisk to see filetype. I think it would be difficult to mount ext3 under WinDoze. Maybe you can but I haven't tried it.

Are there any hazards to installing Linux to a laptop?

No more than installing it anywhere else. I have Linux on 2 laptops (an IBM and a Fujitsu) and it works great. You can overwrite your existing partitions and loose all your data on the laptop...

lol its brand new, so I got all the recov CDs and everything else on here can be stuck on a single CD