LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Squeeze net install on Panasonic cf-25 cannot detect hard disks

This problem has not been solved. There does not seem to be a simple solution. I am going to try a different operating system. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this post.

Gary

I am looking for some some help with a problem I am having installing Debian Squeeze in an old Panasonic CF-25 laptop. It currently has Debian etch installed and is working ok except all of the entries in the sources.list file are obsolete. It only has a floppy drive and a PCMCIA Ethernet card. Etch was installed by booting with four floppies and and downloading the operating system over the internet. Worked great.

Since the floppy method is not available for Squeeze, I am trying to upgrade using the hard disk method described in section 5.1.4. “Booting from Linux Using LILO or GRUB” of the “Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide”. Down loading initrd.gz, vmlinuz and debian-6.0.4-i386-netinst.iso went well. Adding an entry to grub went well. Upon booting, grub found initrd.gz and vmlinuz and the installation screen appeared. Everything went well until about the 6th step, “Scanning hard drive for ISO Image”. There was no hard disk activity and the operation fails. There is no hda entry in the /dev directory and the /var/log/syslog has the following entries:
probing IDE Interface ide0
Ide0 no devices on port.

I tried the Lenny version of initrd.gz and vmlinuz and the hard drive mounted with no problems. The problem with the Lenny version was I was not able to find the Lenny equivalent of debian-6.0.4-i386-netinst.iso. Not having the PCMCIA and Ethernet drivers I was not able to connect to the internet.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Gary