Compaq Conturo Aero 4/33c

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Compaq Conturo Aero 4/33c
started by: bostonrue

Posted by bostonrue on Mar. 21 2004,08:09

yes u read that right, one of the smallest laptops ever in production, im atempting a hd install as i type, this beast runs at 33mhz, has no floppy and has a 124 mb hd, i decided to take out the hard drive and install from a defrent laptop, "if u ever owned one of these u know it means motherbourd is comin out." i figure it will be easier than geting it on there via serial. ok im off to get this project moving. ill post all my results under this topic.

Posted by PhrozenFear on Mar. 21 2004,08:56

Sounds like fun, man.

Posted by bostonrue on Mar. 21 2004,09:02

interesting . . .small problem. installing a boot loader. it seems the instalation doesnt install one, sooo im guna mess around some more ill keep u posted. "then again i havent dug into dsl alot yet, give me another hour" lol

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 22 2004,05:33

RAM me be your limiting factor. How much RAM do you have?

Posted by bostonrue on Mar. 24 2004,06:12

its got either 16 or 24, i forget either way, im just looking to install it, if it boots or not is a difrent story, lol, well ive got a dos partion with the cd copy thing done, i dont really like that, id like a REAL linux partion and and automated installer for the like, im not into the custom type thing never got that deep into the boot process. but anyway, this is what ive atempted, i partioned a drive with dos, booted from the cd, told it to knoppix tohd=/dev/hda1 it completed, so thats good, but next problem, my system has no floppy drive, so i atempted to use a linux boot loader called LOADLIN. i have it in the autoexec.bat with the folowing line.

loadlin kernal initrd=vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 rw

i did some searching on line to find it the vmlinuz i have it pointing to is a direct copy of the floppy, along with the entire contents on the dos drives root, it starts to boot then desplays this msg

kernal panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:01

im asuming 01:01 is the time of acurance, now from here i figured hmm that large file called knoppix in the directory, how do i get at its contents. but if u got a better idea for me or a way to use a real bootloader and a linux filesystem with this installed like anyother linux system please do tell. im guna be all eyes on this forum till then. lol thank u for reading this far.

Posted by bostonrue on Mar. 24 2004,06:21

ok i decided that telling u the system im doing the actual instalation on might help, im installing on a at&t globalyst "yes its a nec versa with a new name" im using the docking station for the cdrom, and it boots of cd and floppy fine, but my goal is to install dsl onto the hard drive so i can putthe hard drive back into the compaq contura aero 4/33c. if i can just get it installed and on the other system i can go from there. i figure it will be a great learning exeprience, im new to this problem, im not that great with boot loaders but i have messed with freebsd, netbsd, redhat 5.2 through 9.0 and fedora, corel linux "sucked", storm linux 2000 "actually one of my favorites not sure y", cluster knoppix, and a bunch more, just never tryed installing on a system with no external media format which started this hole thing. i found dsl and was so hapy it would fit on the system but now im in a rut again. well theres some info that might help thanks for your time.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 24 2004,14:38

I got loadlin to work using:

Code Sample

loadlin vmlinuz vga=791 initrd=miniroot.gz

where vmlinuz and miniroot.gz were copied from the DSL boot floppy over to the hard disk directory where my loadlin.exe and my batch file were stored.

16 or 24 Meg RAM should be enough to run DS, although creating a swap file or swap partition later on after you have the system up and running is advisable.

Good Luck.

Posted by davide on Mar. 25 2004,15:48

just a question. how can you stuff the whole distro (takes about 200mb I've heard) AND create a swap partition AND have a dos partition if you only have a 124 mb HD?

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 25 2004,18:50

Answer:

Poor Man's or Frugal install.

Install DSL compressed image file directly to DOS, VFAT or Linux EXT2 partition. Size: 50MB.

Then use the rest of the disk space for swap and/or restore tarballs.

Posted by bostonrue on Mar. 27 2004,05:43

well thanks guys it worked, it boots now, but i wasnt thinking, this laptop has no math co-proccesor, so im stuck again, it boots up and says "giving up". any tips? lol

or should i just give up.

Posted by skaos on Mar. 27 2004,16:16

DSL is based on Knoppix which again is based on Debian, so it may be that some Debian kernel will work ... (I have no idea if it will work or where to get it).

Posted by spiritraveller on April 07 2004,02:52

Quote

well thanks guys it worked, it boots now, but i wasnt thinking, this laptop has no math co-proccesor, so im stuck again, it boots up and says "giving up". any tips? lol

or should i just give up.

Please don't give up. I have one of these same laptops and would really like to put DSL on it.

Have a look at < this page >. Skip down to "3.4.20. The `no387' Argument".

If you need to recompile the kernel... it would be a small price to pay to get damn small working on the aero.

Posted by spiritraveller on April 07 2004,03:20

If you want to try a precompiled debian kernel, just check the config file to make sure that MATH_EMULATION is set.

I think you will need to get the kernel source for DSL though. I recall from my adventures with Morphix that the kernel in Knoppix-based distros has a special patch to allow for running from the compressed image. If you are doing the "frugal install" then you will need that patch.

It can be done. Other people have installed Linux on this machine. In fact there is a website somewhere by a guy who installed Debian potato (2.2) on one.

So don't give up. I will be joining you soon.

Posted by flatloop on Oct. 27 2004,20:11

Oh, judging by the dates on these posts you guys gave up... too bad. I've got the same exact machine, and I'm hitting the same exact walls. I've never compiled a kerenel in my life, so I'm super hesitant to even try. If there has been any progess on this project, I would really appreciate an update.

If I make any progress, I'll be sure to update here as well.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 27 2004,21:18

Wow with those specs good luck!
< http://www.alvestrand.no/linux/aero-faq.html >

Brian
AwPhuch