I have an old P4 system that I want to put Slack 12 on. It does not support booting from CD (cd works, but gives boot failure on known good cds, known good cd player, go figure). So, no problem, boot from floppy, and load CD I figure. I created a bootable cd using bare.i, and as it boots, I see scrolling up on the screen that it recognizes the hard drive as hda, and the CD player as hdc. I get to the first prompt, and I'm not sure where to go from here. I've tried:

mount root=/dev/hdc
mount root=/dev/hdc1
mount root=/dev/cdrom
mount root=cdrom

but no matter what I put, it ends up in a kernel panic, cannot open root device <whatever I tried to use as root device>.

If I don't put anything here, and hit <enter> and let it continue, I get to the second prompt: Insert root floppy disk to be loaded into RAM disk...and I don't really have a clue what it wants at this point.

What am I missing - how can I boot from floppy and load the install cd disk 1? Maybe a better question would be, where is this documented? Everywhere I've looked so far is missing that critical step that takes me from a booting floppy to loading the CD.

first you need a boot disk
http://www.slackware.com/install/bootdisk.php

you have one already well done....then you need a root disk
http://www.slackware.com/install/rootdisk.php

and d/load the sbootmgr.dsk

2) this is similar to just d/loading smartbootmanager floppy version booting it...putting cd in...and selecting cd to do balance of install

3) but not so happy with cd drive errors.

can you open up and after checking you know about static electricity...push in the leads/jacks on that cd to see you have no loose connections.

4) cds are cheap around $30 so in the long run that may be a better soln?

Have a look at http://www.slackbasics.org/. This provides a book covering 10.2 (with floppy installation instructions)

However, according to the readme in the Slackware 12 kernels directory, it is next to impossible to get a useful 2.6 kernel onto a floppy. Therefore floppy booting is no longer possible.

Sorry

You are thinking about a totally different boot floppy here. The topic creator wants to boot the install CD from a floppy, not install from a floppy.

aus9 has already covered the correct method, using SmartBootManager from the Slackware install CD. This will allow you to boot to the CD-ROM or any IDE device in the system even if your BIOS doesn't natively support it.

Sorry, was already composing a reply when aus9 replied.

I never thought of the smartbootmanager, as I have never used it. It is on the DVD, in isolinux/sbootmgr, as a bootable floppy (apparently) that only needs to be dd'd onto a floppy and booted.

Or rawrite if you're using Windows =)