install on old pc without no cdrom
 

I recently got a nice old DFI 486 box, and want to use this as a X Terminal to connect to my much newer box running MDK 10.0.

the specs of the old box is : 33mhz, 8 mb ram, 204 mb hdd, no cdrom.
So because there isn't any cdrom or support for a cdrom (i think) and also the lack of space i need to find a way to get linux on this baby so that i could get the XServer to connect to my newer box.

Can anyone point me in the right direction so that i can get this box going for my 2 year old at home.

thanx

I have a similar box running Win95 but the cdrom works fine, slow, but certain. Have you tried connecting a cd-rom?

Also if you can install Dos on the box, there are simple programs available to load data through a serial port. Once you've got Dos running you could feed the necessary files to the old box through you other PC and then install Linux from the HD

hi Linmix

yes dos runs fine . I think it would probably be better to install the old hdd on my new box and format and partition there, then copy the files across and then put back into the old machine and boot using a floppy(which one and where to get ?) and then install from there on using the files on the drive?

what do you think?Will that work ?
also , what distro will i require, seeing that i just want to get the boxes connected so that the Xserver can be used to connect?

i plugged in a cdrom on the same cable as the hardrive was but oin the bios i don't see a cdrom mentioned anywhere. So not sure if i need to do anything else to get the cdrom working

You took the words out of my mouth!

Don't have access to the old box right now so I can't check the Bios to see what could be done. My memory is a bit shaky on this.

Dunno about the distro but I'm going to download DamnSmallLinux and have a look. I'm new to Linux so can't help much there I'm afraid.

As for booting from a floppy, most distros have a folder "dosutils" somewhere which comes with "rawrite" and a boot.img to make a diskette to boot from. It very easy. :study: the docs and you'll be fine.