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Topic: real old laptop...help, i only have a floppy drive

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lxlsubzer0lxl Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Feb. 2004

Posted: Feb. 08 2004,02:35

i have a really old laptop that only has a floppy drive, how can i get DSL on it? because the only downloads on the site are .iso

bluefreak

Group: Members
Posts: 48
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: Feb. 08 2004,11:17

does it have usb? if u connect a usb cd drive to it then do a hd install it might work. or u could put dsl on a usb flash drive and boot it from there.

--------------
live long and prosper

Modrak

Group: Members
Posts: 189
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: Feb. 08 2004,11:56

Get some single-floopy distro with NFS support and install from network :-)
On 560MB disk it looks like this...

-----------PREPARE----------
1. Do 2 partions: 60 MB (FAT) and 500MB (ext2)
2. Copy the DSL-CD thru NFS to the FAT partion(so the FAT part. will have the same file layout like the CD !!! IT MUST !!! )
3. Boot DOS.Take a floppy with syslinux.exe
4. a:>syslinux c:
-----------REBOOT----------
5. The DSL shoud boot live, like from CD
>>> If you just want to have DSL live, like the CD , STOP HERE
6. Do a HD install and lilo setup...
----------REBOOT-----------
The DSL will boot up from the ext2 part.
Format the 60MB part as linux swap :-)
# mkswap /dev/hda1 (the fat part.)
# swapon /dev/hda1 (the swap is alway good)

hasty

Group: Members
Posts: 280
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Feb. 08 2004,14:40

It's worth persevering as your old machine will get a new lease of life. It runs great on a p150 with 32 mb ram.

Do you have access to another computer?
If so you could try connecting with a network or parallel port cable & booting using a single floppy distro such as tmsrtbt or nuclinux. (google will find both)

Toms uses both plip & slip so you could establish a tcp/ip connection between them and copy the CD over (Don't know if a network install is possible with these - too long since I fiddled with them)

A couple of years ago I transferred win95 to a floppy only laptop using a parallel port cable and tomsrtbt using plip.
Took ages to complete as the speed is about 100mb an hour