Installing Linux by Booting from Floppy?
 

I have an old dell pentium II 133 that I would like to try one of the smaller distros on. The problem is that while it has a cd drive, it can't be set to boot from it. Is there a way to get a floppy to boot the system in such a way as to install linux from the cd drive? I'm looking at Knoppix, but any suggestions on newbie friendly small distros would be appreciated.
Nyah Levi

I remember reading about installing slackware from floppies, you have to make several of them but I didnt read the whole article also there might be a way to install Damn Small Linux or Peanut linux off of floppies. Try Slackware first cuz it has more than DSL and peanut.
Heres some links:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://www.slackware.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/

Thank you for responding, but what I have is a machine that will not boot from the cdrom, even tho it will read it. I need a floppy that will boot the machine and allow me to then install from the cdrom. Also the hard drive is under 3 gig, which is too small for a full install, which is why I need a small distro. Thanks again, I will try the floppy distros, and if anyone else can answer my original question, thank in advance. Nyah Levi

Yeah you can install Slackware(or most of the distros) using bootdisks, on Slackware 10 CD1 there's a "bootdisks" directory, check out the readme.txt file in there. I think bare.i will do for you.
Though Slackware isn't really newbie friendly, if you don't mind investing a little time into it you should be alright.

Try Libranet 2.7 (The free version) http://www.libranet.com. You can create boot disks from the CD, even under windows IIRC.

If you want to learn something about the nuts and bolts of linux, look at Core Linux (http://coredistro.sf.net). I use this on my P166 which cannot boot from CD either. It's not actually anywhere near as hard as it sounds, especially if you use Tony Whitmore's guides. I wrote a reiserfs howto for it which requires booting from a floppy - it is in the forums.