Floppy disk/ network installbased

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Floppy disk/ network installbased
started by: chris_andrew

Posted by chris_andrew on July 16 2005,14:04

Hi, all.

I have the following old Compaq laptop: 32MB RAM ,800MB HDD,PCMCIA network card, floppy,no CD drive.

I did a Debian Sarge install using 3 * floppies, then a network install from the internet. This went fairly smoothly.

Unfortunately, Sarge didn't recognise some of my hardware. I would like to do a Knoppix based install, in a similar way. This way, I'll have the power of Debian, and the "it just works" of Knoppix hardware detection.

Does anybody know whether this is possible, without a CDROM drive?

Thanks,

Chris.

Posted by roberts on July 16 2005,14:58

Sure can, it is described in the documentation project look < here >
There are other methods also described in the docs.

Posted by chris_andrew on July 16 2005,15:28

Cheers,

What a star. I'll give this a go and let you know how I get on.

Will I be able to get the full DSL HD install if it works?

Thanks,

Chris.

Posted by chris_andrew on July 16 2005,16:36

Hi,

tomsrtbt booted, but PCMCIA network card not seen. Any ideas? :-(

Thanks,

Chris.

Posted by chris_andrew on July 16 2005,20:05

If it helps, the PCMCIA network card, seems to get detected by Debian as a NE2000.

On the install, could I create 3 debian partitions /, swap, spare.

After debian install, download frugal, cp to fd0 or spare, and run from here?

Thanks,

Chris.

Posted by chris_andrew on July 16 2005,21:46

Excert from dmesg:

Cirrus PD672x ISA-to-PCMCIA

Maybe I need to find a different boot disk, to do the same.

Posted by roberts on July 16 2005,22:37

Chris, If you have net access from a minimum Debian install, then download the iso into an approriatly sized partition, download the boot floppy and dd onto a floppy disk. Then try to boot from floppy, with the boot option:

dsl fromhd=/dev/hda2 frugal

Where hda2 is appropriate for your system

You might also need vga=normal

Once, you can boot from floppy and X looks good, then you can wipe the other partition that had Debian, and do a frugal_grub install or a regular hard drive install.

Posted by Max on July 16 2005,23:01

Tomsrtbt is fairly picky on the PCMCIA network card. I had to try 4 different ones before I found one it recognized. Once you get past this and get DSL installed, DSL will recognize most cards. Borrow one if you have to!

Posted by chris_andrew on July 17 2005,09:48

Hi, guys.

I can't find a solution, so I guess it's back to Debian, for the time being :-(.

Thanks,

Chris.

Posted by chris_andrew on July 17 2005,15:05

All,

Could I use a different way of networking? I have a parallel and serial port available.

Thanks,

Chris.