Okay I have an HP Omnibook 2100 Laptop. The only spec page I found from a google shows its ancient. I cant post a link b/c of post count...

It's ancient as far as I can tell. Now I checked the HCL and it was not listed in there so I'm not sure on compatability. But here's what happens. I boot from the slackware cd I made, format my partitions. Then I enter setup and am able to setup my swap space and my target partition no problem. However, the setup can not find my cdrom for me to continue with the install. Is this something I can make work?

I have a flash drive big enough to hold the first install CD on it. Is there some way to mount this instead and install from there?

Thanks for the consideration...

First thing I'd want to check is to make sure you have your source device set up properly in the install menu.

Second thing is that yes, you could install from the flash drive - they usually appear on /dev/sda1, but that could vary. Same as above, you'd want to set the source device properly.

Okay i've tried to look around for something on setting up the source device but not having any luck.

When you say make sure your source device is setup correctly, how do I set it up? In the install menu all I do is select source > auto detect cd rom. I had a similar problem on some desktops installing 9.1 but that was fixed by switching out cdroms... little harder to do with a laptop.

Okay. Instead of autodetecting the cdrom, there are a couple other options.

First, instead of going to 'autodetect', go to 'manual' and select the device name of your cd rom - probably /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc.

If that doesn't work, you'd have to mount the drive, and select 'premounted directory' from the install menu. Again, to mount it, you'd need to know the device name, so the first option is probably best.

If you want/have to install from the flash drive, you'll need to take option #2.

irongun324 what kind of cdrom is it on that lappy? If ide install should work. If pcmcia then boot/driver floopy may work or boot param. can tell installer to use pcmcia. How pcmcia cdrom is detected then becomes important. Your lappy has usb port?
Tuxmobile has RH install notes for Omnibook2000 lappy which may help with SW.

there's a link in my sig to a detail page of the laptop, but I dont think that gives enough info on the CD rom ... still have not had any luck with this though. bout ready to quit the idea :/

i tried mounting it manually and that didn't work either. I saw the drive name come up in the booting sequence, and im pretty sure it detected my usb drive... but neither worked, or i did something wrong... is it possible the laptop is too old for the newest version of slack?

your lappy is not too old.I have SW10.2 on P233 machine but it has ide cdrom. Your link says cdrom uses plugin-module.Pcmcia?Usb? It says nothing about ide except for hard drive. Does the BIOS support usb boot? To use the flash drive to install? Dont give up try tuxmobil on linux-on-laptop linux installs on your lappy.

Have you tried burning the image to a different CD? I burned 10.1 onto a CD I bought for like $20/100 pack. I had the same problem as you. When I burned to a higher-quality CD it worked great. Let me know if that helps