Another Linux newbie on another Dino
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Another Linux newbie on another Dino
started by: DuMonk
Posted by DuMonk on Mar. 14 2004,21:25
Hi, Since I got this old dino (pent 1 with 8MB RAM) I decided my time has come to become a part of the Linux community. Since this dino cannot boot from CD I have to boot from floppy, so I made the bootfloppy from the DSL CD.
two things are kind of odd :
1) passed undefined mode number (press <SPACE>)
2) hanging at: [Probing SCSI....wd7000.o
My goal is to install DSL on my HD from CD and make it coexist with Win95. Any suggestions ?
Cheerz,
DuMonk
Posted by amarui on Mar. 15 2004,14:37
well, you can try that:on boot type
knoppix noscsi
Posted by hawki on Mar. 15 2004,17:19
if knoppix noscsi works for the wd7000 error try this at the boot promptknoppix noscsi vga=normal
that should get rid of the undefined mode error.
Posted by DuMonk on Mar. 15 2004,18:28
Oy.... thanks....your suggestions worked
I proceeded one step..... however....
Looking for CDROM in : /dev/scd0 is the next stop....
pauses there for ages and then decides I have to make do with 6 commands : cat mount umount insmodd rmmod lsmod
any tips on how to connect to the CDROM from here ?
Posted by hasty on Mar. 15 2004,19:21
Ouch sounds a genuine dino 
must be a prehistoric cdreaderStart win95 and copy the contents of the knoppix folder to your root directory (c: drive).Make sure you name it exactly the same.
Then reboot with the DSL floppy and it should find the directory and run ok.
Not certain if the gui front end will run in 8 mbs though, but the command line will, so you can pratice your basic linux skills
HTH
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 16 2004,18:48
I can run DSL on a Pentium-I 60MHz system with 40MB of RAM.8 MB of RAM may be too little for a full blown grahical (X-Windows) setup of DSL. Creating a swap file or a swap partition is almost a must-have for an 8MB system.
You probably have an old CDROM drive and disk controller that will not be autodetected by DSL. For example, my PC has an old Aztec sound card with a special Mitsumi CD-ROM controller and Mitsui CD-ROM drive.
It is possible to get this CDROM drive to work in DSL after you are up and running, but it will not work as a boot device even with a boot floppy.
If your computer is like mine, you will need to make a new directory on your C:\ drive. Please create C:\KNOPPIX directory and then copy all of the files over from your CDROM's \KNOPPIX directory.
Then create a boot floppy disk and reboot with the floppy inside the drive.
The boot process will find the files on the C:\ drive and use them to boot up DSL. A side benefit is that your DSL will run faster because your C:\drive is faster than your CDROM drive.
Search the forum for more details. Push the "Search" button above and try several different searches using keywords like "poor" (for poor man's install), or "swap". Then choose ALL FORUMS and search FROM THE BEGINNING or NEWER.
Also, the first time that you boot DSL, you will want to boot into a TEXT MODE console (similar to an MSDOS prompt). At the boot prompt, type in "knoppix 2" to start up in this mode.
Good Luck.
Posted by Modrak on Mar. 16 2004,20:52
If you want...you can try my swap-to-file script< http://bill.gates.2004.sweb.cz/dsl.htm >
Posted by pvdvyve on Mar. 19 2004,14:49
Hay,I notice that I'm not the only-one with this kind of problems.
Thanks for the tips.
I'm also trying to run DSL on:
an old Pentium 75Mhz-48 Mb RAM, with an ancient CD-rom (and I had the same problem reading the cd)
I now copied the whole cd to a directory called dsl(c:\dsl) and I will try to boot from diskette.
If that' works, I like to try make DSL run on an old Pentium 75Mhz-24Mb RAM, without CD-rom
(I can switch the CD rom to copy the DSL cd to the HD from that one???
Have fun...
Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 20 2004,18:22
You might need to make sure that your CD's "KNOPPIX" directory is located in"C:\KNOPPIX" on your hard drive.
Otherwise, the boot floppy may have difficulty in finding the files on bootup.
Posted by PhrozenFear on Mar. 20 2004,23:40
If you can get it to read from the CD at all, and more than once, then I'd suggest you do a wipe of winblowz and just install it.
Posted by pvdvyve on Mar. 21 2004,20:20
Hay, I succeeded in running dsl on my dino. But I did it in another way: took a small disk from the dino and ran it in a pc with a more recent cd drive, made a HD install en moved the disk again, de-connected the other drive there & booted, right into dsl.
The problem I now have is to make my serial mouse workin'.
I will put my results in this thread:
< pvdvyve-dino & dsl >
Have fun...
__
DD.22mar2004: just to find out: copied the knoppix dir right under c and booted with diskette--->yes indeed, DSL finds the image and starts up from /dev/hda1
It works... faster than from cd.
Just as cbagger01 said.
bye
Posted by DuMonk on Mar. 30 2004,21:20
Hi, After doing a poor man's install by temporarily connecting the HD to my main PC and also adding a swap space, DSL still would not boot fully (although I nearly got there)....
Then I found an old 486 litterally on the street ( with the neighbour's garbage
???) and took it home.... It had an astounding 32 MB....So I transferred 16 MB and had DSL flying in no time.....Note for future Dino riders : 8 MB appears to be insufficient for DSL !!!
(including X-windows, of course)
Of course I will now try to get two Dino's running on DSL :-)
Hasta la Banana
Du MONK
(short for Dutch Monkey)
Posted by hasty on Mar. 31 2004,05:44
Well done Monk Pvdvyve: The usual fix for serial mice is
rm-f /dev/mouse
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/mouse
(thats assuming mouse is on com port 1)
HTH