DSL on old IBM laptop

Forum: Laptops
Topic: DSL on old IBM laptop
started by: natv

Posted by natv on Feb. 03 2007,23:15

Hi guys,

I found an old laptop I want to install DSL on:

IBM 755C
20MB RAM, 512MB HD
No CD
Floppy
PCMCIA Orinoco silver wireless card

**Currently machine has a working Win95 installation with working wireless.

I tried booting up with 'BG-Rescue Linux' the the Debian Boot disks, and get similar errors on floppy#2 (the root.img one)

With BG-Rescue Linux, Disk 1 runs fine and gets to the part where is asks for the floppy with the root image on it.

I put in flopyp#2, and I get errors:

end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0

then if I hit ENTER again I get a kernel panic error.

I also tried it with the Debian floppy boot.img and root.img install disks, and the SAME thing happens (disk one works fine, but when it won't load the root disk)

I tried 10 different floppy disks INCLUDING the boot disk that worked just fine, so I don't think it's really my media.

Currently machine has a working Win95 installation with working wireless. Is there anything I can perhaps do through Windows95 (copy files over from another PC, but then what?) There is only one partition on the drive, so I don't know how to make a new partition without removing windows.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks
Nat

Posted by lucky13 on Feb. 03 2007,23:29

Have you tried following the instructions on this page (even though you don't have a CD-ROM)?
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install >

Posted by roberts on Feb. 03 2007,23:40

I would download the dsl-embedded version. Not that you are going to try to run qemu, but this is a zip file with easy access to the image file.

Download onto Windows95 and unzip it. Then using windows copy over the KNOPPIX folder to the base c:\ directory. Then you will have c:\knoppix\knoppix

Next download the dsl boot floppy from the release candidate area. This new floppy works well with low ram machines. Download into Windows and use rawwrite to create this boot floppy.

Then boot from the DSL boot floppy and it should find the knoppix folder on your C: drive.

boot: dsl 2 legacy frugal

when you get a prompt #

# mkdosswapfile

When done, reboot from floppy

boot: dsl mem=20M legacy

You may need to add a video boot code as well, like

vga=normal

press f3 for vga codes like vga=788

Posted by natv on Feb. 03 2007,23:51

Thanks Roberts

Which one is the embedded version:

< http://mirror.linuxquestions.org/pub/distributions/damnsmall/ >

I looked around also in some other directories but I'm not sure what to look for.

Thanks
Nat

Posted by natv on Feb. 03 2007,23:57

Also, just wanted to clarify.. I'm only keeping Win95 on the machine for now, but I don't need it once I have DLS installed and running.

Posted by roberts on Feb. 04 2007,00:01

The official mirror site list is
< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html >

Using the first site listed:
< ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/ >

The file is dsl-3.2-embedded.zip

Posted by andrewb on Feb. 04 2007,22:51

You will find you need to use the XFree system to get X running on this machine - have a look at the post:

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....86_svga >

I managed to get X running (slowly) using the instructions in this post. The full Xfree isn't needed, just the server (just use the server name instead of xvesa in .xserverrc)

You'll also need a valid configuration file. If you're struggling to find an appropriate one send me a PM & I'll send one out from my 755c.

Good luck.