LinuxQuestions.org - No BIOS on ancient laptop.

- Linux - Newbie (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/)

- - No BIOS on ancient laptop. (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/no-bios-on-ancient-laptop-4175594372/)

This may have bearing. I once had a machine back in that time-frame which had something called "Fast POST" enabled. In other words, it blew through the POST screen so fast that, even if you knew the key to hit to enter setup, you barely had time to enter it.

Once you get into the BIOS in this puppy, if "Fast POST" is enabled, disable it.

I've seen people lose interest in computers altogether for lack of adequate hardware. Look in your IMs.

I think I had one of these LONG ago... Probably won't boot a USB (nor 128M 'do' Flash) but...
Here's the 189page! manual (15-7 boot order: I remember booting a Win98 install cd)
Also, try -like- this web-search: linux armada 1750 works
DistroWatch.com Search: Distro-category Old Computers, Install Media <700MB [cuz cd!]
returns like [famous] Puppy, TinyCore. Idk why not DSL! kolibri?
Don't be afraid to try [very]OLD versions, esp. if you have a cd-rw (re-write-able!)
Or, IF you can run VirtualBox on your 'big' PC, have a LOOK 1st, in a 128M vbox!
Have fun! Let us know what works out! Best wishes...

Compaq Armada 1750 - 14.1" - PII - 64 MB RAM - 6.4 GB

Code:

    Data Bus Speed

    66 MHz



Hard Drive Capacity

6.4 GB



Floppy Drive



    Type

    3.5" 1.44 MB floppy





RAM



    Memory Speed

    66 MHz

    Configuration Features

    provided memory is soldered

    Upgrade Rule

    max 128 MB module

    Technology

    SDRAM

    Installed Size

    64 MB

wow the memory is even soldered into the thing.
this thing is old, old , old. even though it still runs. If you do get into the bios, a CD maybe the only thing you can boot off of or a floppy drive, which would take you back to to finding an old release that was created for floppy drive install. You'd have to look in there web sight tree and see how far back you could go. Slackware use to do floppies. Don't be scared away by what other people say about Slackware, it is not for beginners.

When Slack first came out that is what beginners used other then redhat (when it was completely free). Slackware is actually a low maintenance OS.

Slackware goes all the way back to its first release.

Index of /slackware

here is a snippet of there version 2.x README

Quote:

These are 1.44 MB bootkernel images for Slackware Linux 2.0.0.

These disks currently use Linux 1.0.9.

You'll need one of these to get Linux started on your system so that you can
install it. Because of the possibility of collisions between the various Linux
drivers, several bootkernel disks have been provided. You should use the one
with the least drivers possible to maximize your chances of success. All of
these disks support UMSDOS.

You will be using the bootkernel disk to boot a root-install disk. See the
rootdsks.144 directory for these.

A bootkernel disk is created by uncompressing the image with GZIP.EXE
(Example: GZIP -d bare.gz), and then writing the image out with RAWRITE.EXE.

RAWRITE is interactive and reasonably user-friendly.

That is how I had to install Slack for the first time, Floppies... :D

If it has windows 98 or below then you could run ZipSlack from within windows.

To be brutally honest - it probably isn't worth the time and effort.

As others have stated, those laptops had a "service partition". In my old job, back in around 2005, we had a number of second hand 1750s and I remember accidentally nuking it and that's pretty much the end of going into the BIOS to configure stuff... however I believe it will still boot the OS - you just can't configure anything in the BIOS... there used to be a means to restore the partition from an MSDOS boot floppy.

To install an OS you might need to boot from a floppy anyway, it's unlikely that a machine of that age will boot from ATAPI CDROM, let alone USB... it's also likely that the optical drive will struggle to read certain types of CDRs and probably won't read CDRWs at all.

Once you've got it installed, modern web browsers, streaming HTML5 video and anything to do with adobe flash, etc are all out of the question (Windows 98 is probably the best OS for it).