Live CDs, Booting from A: and C: Only!

bigoli · 01-25-2005, 06:23 PM

I have an old 486 machine with a CD player. Unfortunately I can't boot using the CD.

How can I use a 'live CD' on this computer?

James Oliver

qwijibow · 01-25-2005, 06:45 PM

Does it happy a floppy disk ???
uise a boot floppy to start your LiveCD.

Ive only used the Knoppix liveCD, that has a boot disk on the liveCD.

jonr · 01-25-2005, 07:01 PM

You can probably also set the BIOS to boot first from the CD drive, second from the floppy
drive (A: drive) and third from the hard drive (C: drive). If there's nothing in the CD or floppy drive,
it will skip to the hard drive, but if you ever want to boot from removable media, all you
have to do is insert the disc, reboot, and it will boot from there (provided it has an appropriate
boot image).

bigoli · 01-25-2005, 08:00 PM

qwijibow and jonr:

Thanks for your quick replies, but here are the problems:

When I boot with a boot floppy, I can't access the CD drive. If I put a 'live' CD in my drive, I can't even access it from Windows 95. ( I said it was an OLD 486!)

My BIOS doesn't know about booting from a CD drive as far as I can tell. Its either A: then C: or vice versa.

James

ghazz · 01-25-2005, 08:49 PM

This may not be of any help, but I believe back in those days there was a boot disk that loaded cdrom drivers so that the cdrom drive could be used under Win95. You "may" be able to start a livecd IF you can load the appropriate drivers for you IDE cdrom through a floppy bootdisk.

I know back when I used fdisk to partition and format Windows OSs, the bootdisk loaded oak technology drivers to use the cdrom drive in DOS....unfortunately, I do not believe it would "autorun"...I could be wrong however since I haven't visiting that environment in years.

You may want to google on the subject.

-g

Kelean · 01-25-2005, 09:13 PM

You need too make a boot disk for win-95 then boot your computer from that and it will ask if you want to boot with CDROM drivers you just say yes and then you can change to D: drive which should be the CDROM. Once you do that you can access the readme files on the cd and find out how to make boot floppy's for the live CD. Most of the live cd's will have sites with FAQ's and instructions on booting from floppies. Good Luck!!