Old Laptop - No CD or USB
Forum: Laptops
Topic: Old Laptop - No CD or USB
started by: robarooney
Posted by robarooney on Dec. 08 2005,18:47
I'd like to use my old Toshiba Satellite Pro 415CS for e-mail, Web surfing, and basic tasks like writing letters, etc. How can I get DSL installed? The laptop does not have a CD drive and there are no USB ports. I'm a linux newbie so I don't know how to put DSL on floppy disks. Is that possible? Is there any other way to load DSL? I have a modem card that works with the laptop - the laptop has Windows 95 on it. I tried both a wireless card and a wired card but the laptop won't recognize them without the drivers.I want to learn more about linux and I would appreciate any advice about getting my Toshiba converted over. This laptop has worked well for me for almost 10 years and I don't want to give it up.
Posted by sarah on Dec. 09 2005,14:46
There's an installation guide using floppies on the DSL Wiki: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....ired%29 >
Before you dive in and follow those instructions though, I'd do some research of your own, and also work out what you want.
For instance, what are your machine specifications? (RAM, Processor speed, HDD size etc?)
Do you want to keep Windows on your machine?
Do you have old hardware kicking around you can connect to your laptop (for example a parallel CD or zip drive)?
Do you know/can you find out the model and manufacturer of your PCMCIA (modem, ethernet or wireless card)?
I have just successfully installed DSL to my Toshiba 100CS which is why I thought I'd ask you to think of some of the questions I wish I'd asked myself first
:o)
It's probably not a bad idea to mention that as well as taking quite a long time to do a DSL installation via floppy disks, you are quite likely to have problems with doing a floppy installation if there is a corrupt file somewhere or something doesn't unpack properly.
Also, just because Windows won't recognise some of your hardware (eg your ethernet card) doesn't mean DSL won't. Maybe start with the wired card as there seems to be a bit better support for different manufacturers from what I've read.
As an example, I can boot from my parallel zip drive using a boot floppy and DSL 1.5, but Windows 95 and 98 both require drivers from the Iomega web site (or somewhere else).
(As an aside, I can boot DSL 2 now, but I had to add driver modules to the boot floppy disk to do it, so if you're booting from parallel drive I'd stick with DSL 1.5 until you get a little experience.)
You might also find it useful to read this tutorial from the DSL Wiki that tells you how to do a network install:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....tall%29 >
Perhaps a good place to start would be by using Toms Root 'n' Boot and see if that will detect your wired card, and if so you can probably try following the instructions on the Wiki page just above.
(and if I've completely led you astray I apologise and hope that someone comes along with better suggestions soon ;o) )
Cheers and beers!
Sarah
Posted by analogman on Dec. 11 2005,22:13
Hi, I have nearly the same perdiciment and I followed those instructions for floppy install w/ Windows. Although it stops suddenly I figured I was to unrar the files to the C:\ and when I did, I rebooted expecting the drive to boot like a CD and run DSL, except it told me 'Invalid Boot Disk'. I booted with a 98 (no ramdrive) disk and checked the c:\ drive, everything is there. I don't see why it won't boot. Anyone know the command from dos to force it to boot?
Posted by analogman on Dec. 11 2005,23:02
Darn, I should have registered to edit my above post. After thinking (yeah, I forgot to do that) I realized now that the CD was on my hard drive, this was just like the poorman's install and so I made a boot disk. However, now it's asking for a run level, which it did not do on my desktop. (Could this be that I'm still running the two 50 MB partitions as stated in the Floppy boot instructions, or that I only have 16 MB of RAM to mount the ramdisk?) Any one know how to fix this, or what to type in?
Posted by analogman on Dec. 12 2005,01:56
Alright, status update. Turns out it was the RAM. By running the mem=16M cheat I can get it to load, to a messed up desktop. By running vga=7xx I can get it to load, but it gets to the grey screen with the X in the middle and stops there. I've tried various cheats such as: base, minimal, lowram, noicon, and all combined. I really want the GUI, but my final goal is to take this HDD copy of the disk and run a hard drive install on it. I noticed an option for a text only hard drive install, once this is done, would it allow me to run the HDD install with the GUI and everything like the original LiveCD is supposed to?Also, for those that read earlier, the Floppy install instructions (w/ Windows) seems to stop after unraring the archive. It makes no mention of making the boot disk as I had to, nor how to do a HDD install. Is there something missing, or is the info elsewhere? Or is it understood what happens next and I'm just too much of a n00b? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I really want to bring this laptop back from the dead of obsoleteness.
Posted by sarah on Dec. 12 2005,13:56
Hey well done for getting that far..:o)
Ok, because you've got *really* low ram, it's probably better to run the installation script from the command line without booting into X. I'm doubtful that it would even work from the X desktop. The install script basically just opens up a terminal window I think anyway, so I doubt you're losing much there.
I run (part-time) from a frugal install onto a laptop with 16M RAM P75 processor and about 250-300 meg usable hard drive space. I use Links a lot for web browsing, and Dillo for the rest. It runs ok for the stuff I want, but be aware that your machine is not going to run all the applications available in DSL.
However, it will run a hell of a lot better if you create swap space. I kind of felt my way around and followed instructions from the Wiki and made instructions up for myself. I'll hopefully have time to write detailed instructions tomorrow afternoon (my time) so about 24 hours after this post is up I guess.
You could also try booting into X with:
| Code Sample |
| dsl minimal vga=normal mem=16M desktop=jwm |
and see how you go with that.
And you're right, that Wiki page about the installation from floppies needs some work, but there are others that will help you, search for install (I think there's a category link off the Wiki Main Page)
Just so you don't think I'm a complete cow, I would write up a quick how-to tonight, but I'm really tired and very very likely to make mistakes or leave out something important. Since I'm not yet technically proficient enough to write something like that in my sleep, I reckon you're probably better off waiting to see if someone beats me to it, or until I can think clearly enough to do it properly.
And... now that I've read your last post again: if you run the install script from the command line it will make no difference to the install itself - you'll still get your gui and so on. The problem is that if you install from the install script (which is designed to be run from a CD) you're going to format your HD in the process and thus interfere with your current installation. I won't even guess what happens there, because I've no idea.
So... the short version is to try the network installation method listed below instead:
(You're going to get rid of the current installation of whatever is on your HD at the moment so back up anything important first!)
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki....nstall) >
(Floppy Only with Net Card - Poorma's Install)
And like I said above, follow my advice with caution and tempered with your own common sense since I'm pretty tired!
Good luck
Cheers and beers,
Sarah
Posted by analogman on Dec. 13 2005,19:58
Alright, so I was able to do a frugal install (although after a few pains it finally worked) It loaded MUCH faster than the 2+ hours it did before in minimal mode, and that was full blown mode! However the speed at which it actually operated at was bearable, but still a little iffy. I had Win95 on it and it ran like a dream, I was thinking somewhere close to that with this linux install. So, now that my booting problem was solved and I knew it COULD be done, I decided to try a hard disk install, however due to the fact I still had the frugal it wouldn't boot from the hard drive, but from the image instead and in the process of trying to format that partition into a swap I ended up wasting everything and starting at square one again. Anyway, I'm a patient dude so no big.For those who are wondering how to even get the frugal done... I booted with a Win98 boot disk (no ramdisk version) and made two partitions with fdisk, a huge one that took everything but 50 megs, and then the 50 meg one. I copied the rar files to the bigger one, unrared them to the 50 meg, and booted with the DSL boot disk into command only (dsl 2) and then ran cfdisk to destroy and remake three partitions where the bigger partition had been (leaving the 50 meg with the CD files untouched) according to this PDF I found: < http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....wto.pdf >
I then followed the instructions except I would boot from floppy and run boot: install and choose Frugal install LILO to CF. The hda's were numbered differently so I'd take that into account, and finally when asked if there's any boot options type ALL that you want, since you booted from floppy it doesn't remember the ones you already put in. After that it should go fine then.
Posted by Dark Blue on Dec. 18 2005,02:09
Wow, I never really thought to find people with the same crazy plan as I have: to internet and run a text editor on a prehistoric laptop I got for free :PMine is a HP Omnibook, 100mhz, 1Gb hd and 16 megs of RAM ;) so cute. But, now I've come to the real work.
The lappie currently has an old Windows 98 install which is totally useless for me, contains no data, I don't really care formatting; except for one thing. With Windows still working, I can access the infrared-port, the only 'way out' since my laptop has no usb and doesn't recognize my new-bought pcmcia card while running Windows.
Sweeping away Windows would leave me with my only input device: the floppy drive, and I'm a little reluctant to do that. But according to the Wiki explanation, I háve to make 2 partitions and sweep all the old stuff off.
I downloaded the 'dsl-2.0.iso' from the downloads page... there were more iso's! but this seemed to be the most simple one. Tomorrow I'll give it a shot.
Don't know if anyone cares, but I'll keep you posted!
- Heidi
Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 19 2005,06:21
You do not need to blow away any existing partitions in order to try DSL.You can try a poorman's install to your existing C:\ drive (you need approximately 50MB free space on this drive) without hurting anything else. You also can make a DOS swap file on your C:\ drive after you get DSL up and running. The swapfile is good if you are low on RAM, which is true in your case. I would create a 32MB or 48MB swap file if possible.
Posted by Dark Blue on Dec. 19 2005,20:13
That would be great!I'll try it rightaway, I downloaded the file and do have 50 megs free...
I copied the full Win98 CD to the harddrive via infrared
...and then again because it seemed some .cab files were corrupt... well, says enough. It was hell, and if I throw that off, I should have about 200 mb free. 
Thanks!
Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 19 2005,23:08
Just make sure to copy the\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX
file from cd or from inside the ISO file by using a program like WinISO
and make sure that you copy it to:
C:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX
note the UPPERCASE letters
Posted by DarkBlue on Jan. 17 2006,12:55
Yes... found out that I will really need an infrared connection (not possible right now) or cd drive for that.I'm trying Toms Root 'n Boot disk right now, but can't really figure out why it won't boot... (I can think of something) ...
I copied the loadlin.exe and zimage to a floppy and then copied the image on it with rawwrite. that was not exactly the instruction Toms faq gave me (I should boot in dos modus and fix the install there) ... and so it didn't work. Now I'll try the install from dos on the floppy, and try to boot from the floppy... *grr.