boot floppy

Forum: HD Install
Topic: boot floppy
started by: pyrael

Posted by pyrael on Aug. 17 2005,11:39

I have a IBM PCServer 300, nice old server. I wanted to put dsl on it.Problem is, I can't boot from cd drive or a usb drive. I have a floppy drive so a boot floppy would work (I assume).
Heres th server specs:
P1 MMX 233 MHz
Adaptec SCSI W/UW
IBM 4.2 GB SCSI HDD
Toshiba SCSI CDRom
Python 25501 SCSI Tape drive
Floppy drive
Lots of Etherlink III cards
130 MB EEC RAM

As you can see, I don't have any IDE devices at all, and no controller either.

Any and all suggestions would be a big help.
Thanks

Posted by adssse on Aug. 17 2005,13:37

Here is some info regarding a boot floppy. The following is from the DSL Documentation.

"If your board is not capable of booting from CD-ROM (or USB), you will need to make a Boot floppy! Just head over to one of the mirrors and grab the latest boot- x.x.x.img (or boot-usb-x.x.x.img). It should be in the "current/" directory.

In linux, you can create a boot floppy by typing

***Code Sample***

dd if=boot-X.X.X.img of=/dev/fd0

***End Code Sample***

As far as windows, may I suggest John Newbigin's RawWrite for Windows. It's available at < http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ > rawwrite.htm and is a lot easier to use than the original command-line based rawrite2.exe."

Hope this helps.

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 17 2005,13:37

There is a boot floppy image available from the DSL mirrors, same place you get the ISO.
You might also consider installing Grub on the harddrive so that you can boot from that once the system is installed. Grub is available in the myDSL repository
< http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....m >

EDIT: Again, I'm not paying attention to what forum I'm in =o)
If you're doing a harddrive install, Lilo is already provided, so grub is unnecessary.

Posted by pyrael on Aug. 17 2005,14:29

Thanks for the help,

I tried the boot floppy from ibiblio, it boots fine, but when it tries to load a driver for my cdrom, it fails. any ideas on what to do with this?

also, would a net install be possible?

Posted by adssse on Aug. 18 2005,04:33

Here is the link to the documentation that has some different installations.
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/62 >

There is one called "Floppy Only Install with Netcard (Poormans Install)" that might be what you are looking for.