DSL on an old Toshiba Libretto

Forum: HD Install
Topic: DSL on an old Toshiba Libretto
started by: Vinn

Posted by Vinn on June 20 2006,02:11

Hello. I've tried Damn small linux and I love it, it works really well and its really lightweight. I was wondering if anyone could help me install it on my Toshiba Libretto 100ct. It's an old, very small notebook, with no cdrom or usb ports. All it has is two pc card slots and an external floppy disk drive. I can use my 128mb compactflash card with it if I use the card reader that goes into the pc card slot.

Right now it has windows 2000 and its really slow, I'd love to have dsl as its main OS.

Thanks

EDIT: I just tried booting from floppy by using bootfloppy.img and copying KNOPPPIX to the C drive. It booted off the floppy but when it tried to load the first file it failed and asked me to insert another disk.

Posted by daldred on June 20 2006,20:11

Quote (Vinn @ June 19 2006,22:11)

I was wondering if anyone could help me install it on my Toshiba Libretto 100ct.

Just to clarify: do you want DSL as your *only* OS or in addition to Windows? And how big an HDD have you available?

I've got DSL running on a Libretto 50CT with a 6Gb HDD, with Win98 as an alternative. Practically, I haven't booted Windows for ages - apart from anything else it makes a right mess of various BIOS settings, meaning you have to go through the BIOS setup before booting Linux.

The key problem with loading Linux onto the Libretto from the floppy is that the PCMCIA floppy isn't recognised by Linux until various drivers are loaded - and they are only loaded once the BIOS (which can deal with the floppy) has handed over to Linux. Catch 22!

If you can partition the disk somehow without destroying your Windows system, you can use either a network or your flash card to copy the DSL image onto the Libretto, then run it from within Windows. I think a Hard Disk Install will then work from there.

Posted by Vinn on June 20 2006,22:27

Yeah I'd like to get rid of Windows. It runs terribly slow and I don't really like it. The Libretto's got a 5gb hard drive inside.
I really don't care about keeping Windows intact, I'd like to wipe the hdd clean and install DSL on it.

Do I need a certain amout of RAM to run dsl within Windows? Right now this laptop is very sparse, i think only 32mb of RAM. Also, how would I go about running DSL inside windows?

Posted by skaos on June 21 2006,14:05

If you're handy with a screwdriver and don't mind taking the disk out, then you could install the disk in another PC, install DSL and put it back. Only thing to remember is to install it as the same ide position in both boxes, most likely primary master.

Posted by JustoTech on June 21 2006,23:33

Quote (skaos @ June 21 2006,09:05)

The best thing I can see is to do it the way he's got listed. That shouldn't cause any kind of driver issues or anything else like it would with Windows because DSL auto-configures all hardware when it boots.

Posted by Vinn on June 22 2006,06:36

Really? That's great, I'll probably do that then.

One last question. When DSL installs, does it format the drive (like Windows)? I'd like it to do that since I don't want anything left of Windows on the Libretto.

Thanks a lot

Posted by Pat Mustard on July 13 2006,15:34

I installed DSL on the HD in another box and swapped it. I can't remember exactly how I did it (did I manually delete and recreate filesystems or was it part of the install) but it is dedicated to DSL now.

One thing I will say is I can get textmode up perfectly (vga=807 - 800x480 fb mode) but I haven't had any luck with X - the screen colours get disrupted (to green) and it persists after you kill the X server. I've only tried this with the Xvesa stuff so far.

Other than that, perfectly good install, wireless card up with a little config. Thumbpad works like a dream. If you know how to fix X, feel free to make my day...