booting DSL on an old laptop

Forum: HD Install
Topic: booting DSL on an old laptop
started by: avoura

Posted by avoura on Feb. 06 2007,13:48

I want to run DSL on my old laptop (Pentium 90 MHz) which already has Windows 98SE installed on a single hard disk, which cannot boot from CD. So I found instructions on the DSL wiki pages (< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install >, to use Loadlin.exe to boot DSL from files placed on the hard disk. I followed the instructions but cannot get it to work.
I put the necessary lines of code into config.sys and created options.txt, but when the PC boots, and it loads the config.sys menu with windows and linux, I select linux and it starts to boot but then states it cannot find the kernel image.

So I tried it the other way that was mentioned, i.e. after it gets to the menu, I go the command prompt (pressing SHIFT-F5 to get to the DOS prompt), and go into the isolinux directory, and then run the command "loadlin @options.txt" and it then does load, although as the PC is slow it takes ages to load.

Any ideas why it will not work from the config.sys file, i.e.
shell=c:\isolinux\loadlin.exe @c:\isolinux\options.txt
?

Posted by sankarv on Mar. 02 2007,05:20

If you want you may try the embedded version of DSL which comes along with qemu. There wont be any booting issues. This is just an alternative suggestion.

Posted by roberts on Mar. 02 2007,06:15

I have no idea why isolinux would be on a windows partition.
There is a new boot floppy available for download which has two sample windows bat files, using linld and loadlin. Both will work on win9x. All that is required are three files:

c:\knoppix\knoppix
c:\linux24
c:\minirt24.gz

You might want to download it and take a < here > for the bootfloppy-utils.img

Use rawwrite to write this file to a floppy.
Test first by booting from the floppy.
Copy the one you like, linld or loadlin