User Feedback :: Seeking a Recipie For DSL Startup



OK, let me set the stage.

I have a Sony Vaio. 133Mhz, 64MB RAM laptop 6GB disk - the PCG VX505 model.
It's got Win 98 on it now, which runs OK, but I want to try DSL.

Given:

A) I don't have the ability to repartition the hard drive, as in I don't want to make a commitment to wiping the hard drive or anything.

B) I have sucessfully made bootable CD's of the Current DSL Distro

C) The Computer WILL start to boot from the CD Rom (Which is an EXTERNAL drive attached via the PCMCIA card and....

D) I do have a USB keychain drive installed that the system seems to recognize but...

E) When booting from the CD here's what I see:

DSL Splash Screen with Boot Options F2 and F3 indicated.
Loading linux24...
Loading (somethi
Proming SCSI
Scannign for USB Devices...
Looking for CDROM Devices (a list whizzes past)

Then WHAM
Can't find Knoppix filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press Reset button to quit.

I presume it's the el-bizzaro external CD Drive that's plugged into the PCMCIA Card Slot that may have something to do with this issue. However, I'm NOT at all comfortable with too much in the way of dealing with CLI commands - my only other Linux installs are Ubuntu on one system (no problems) and Turbolinux 6.5 on another system that's a file server.  

I'm less of a chef and more of a person following a recipie. I can't improvise this stuff, I need some steps to check and commands to copy  to try to make this work.

Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction, as I'd really like to give this a try.
1. Download UltimateBoot CD
Quote
Partition Tools
Ranish Partition Manager  2.44
XFDISK (Extended FDISK)  0.9.3beta
SPFDISK (Special FDISK)  2000-03q
TestDisk  5.7
Partition Resizer  1.3.4
Partition Saving  3.00
Free FDISK  1.3.0
MBRtool  2.2.100
MBRWork  1.07b
FIPS  2.0
Active@ Partition Recovery  2.1.1


2. Using win98 after resizing the partition copy the entire contents of the CD to the windows partition (meaning the boot and KNOPPIX dir directly to c:

3. Use a boot floppy to start the system...it should autodetect the pcmcia cdrom after system boots, and detect the KNOPPIX directory on the Windows partition (which incidentally should be /dev/hda1

4.  Use http://tuxmobil.org/sony.html for reference as well on specific hardware issues...this page has hundreds of "Linux" installs on different machines...so im sure one can help you out

5. Enjoy!

I would recommend doing a frugal HD install after the windows partition, then install the grub bootloader...once you do that you will never use that M$ crap on that old machine again because you will have a ferrari for a system instead of a steam train!

Brian
AwPhuch
If you have Windows 98, just try a "poorman's install".

See the DSL booting wiki for details

original here.