380D boot and install FYI

Forum: Laptops
Topic: 380D boot and install FYI
started by: jdharm

Posted by jdharm on April 18 2006,17:58

I thought I would post the details of my frustration with getting my 380D to boot and install. For the search to find:

Map File Write
BIOS error code 0x99
undefined mode
image checksum error

These are all the issues I had at one point or another in trying to get the thing to boot. At one point I put the HDD in a T40 laptop and installed from a CD and then put it back in the 380D...the video was FUBAR (grainy, green, barely discernible graphics with what appeared to be an 80x60 grid pattern over the top of the graphics), but the system booted. What follows is a step by step of the final working process for a CD boot and hdd install, dumbed down because a lot of the posts I found in the forums were Greek to me. So these instructions are what I would have liked to see.

1. Set the 380D to boot to floppy first.

2. Boot a floppy made using a program such as Winimage and the bootfloppy.img file. Also, make a CD using a program such as Nero or Easy CD Creator and the dsl-2.3-syslinux.iso file.

3. When the floppy boots and you get a prompt use the following bold boot parameters exactly as they appear:

fb800x600 dsl fromcd

4. A popup occurs during boot titled DSL X Setup and gives you the choice of Xvesa and Xfbdev. You want to choose Xfbdev.

5. A popup occurs during boot titled DSL X Setup and gives you the choice of Yes or No for a USB mouse. You want to choose No.

6. A popup occurs during boot titled DSL X Setup and gives you the choice of Yes or No for a IMPS/2 mouse. You want to choose Yes.

7. A popup occurs during boot titled Please Choose a Keyboard and gives you the choice many. Choose as needed.

8. DSL will now boot the GUI. Once it is up and running click on the desktop and go to Apps > Tools > Install to Hard Drive.

9. At the prompt for Enter Target Partition I entered hda. This resulted in the entire drive being reconfigured. The other prompts are fairly self-explanatory. When prompted to use a boot loader I said yes and had it install Lilo.

The drive starts up from the HDD just fine with a beautiful screen. And all is well after 3 days of wrestling with it. I hope this helps someone save a 2.5 days on the process.