iB::Topic::installation on old thinkpad

	Damn Small Linux :: Damn Small Linux Board The DSL Forums

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » DSL Tips and Tricks » installation on old thinkpad

		Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
		Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Topic: installation on old thinkpad, 24x PCMCIA CD-ROM, or floppy

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

bubazoo

Group: Members
Posts: 14
Joined: Mar. 2006

Posted: Mar. 04 2006,23:59

I have an IBM Thinkpad 760XL
166 MMX processor
32 meg RAM
2.1 gig HD
floppy drive
2 PCMCIA slots (but can only use 1 at a time for some odd reason)

I can't seem to get ANY OS installed on this thing, so I'm going to try DSL, but I highly doubt I can get DSL on this either.

It does have a 1.44 mb internal floppy drive,
but all I have is a 24x PCMCIA CD-ROM that I purchased just so I could have a CD-ROM to install from, but none of these Linux distros will detect it, its aggrivating.

I've tried hitting F12 to boot from the PCMCIA CD-ROM, but it still refuses to boot from it, and I've tried installing multi boot menus and those won't let me boot from the PCMCIA CD-ROM either. I know it works though, because I was able to get Knoppix to detect it using their PCMCIA floppy drivers, but I didn't have enough RAM to run knoppix's GUI...

Do you guys have any ideas at all, how I can get DSL installed on my laptop? Its the only laptop I can afford, and I just wanted it to surf the web and check my email with thats all really.

I also have a Linksys PCMCIA 10/100 NIC card, which for some reason I can't use both the CD-ROM and nic at the same time, probably an IRQ conflict but since I can't put Windows on here, or any other linux distro other then MS-DOS, I don't know what to do to fix the IRQ conflict...

take care,

Guest
Unregistered

Posted: Mar. 05 2006,07:12

If that yours cd rom drive works in dos maybe you can do this http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=11902

bubazoo

Group: Members
Posts: 14
Joined: Mar. 2006

Posted: Mar. 05 2006,17:53

I don't know if it works in DOS or not, as I do not know how to mount a pcmcia cd-rom from an MS-DOS prompt. I don't think there is a way...

however, it does work with a set of knoppix pcmcia boot disks, so the drive is functioning fine, it just won't boot from the F12 menu, so I'll have to try booting with the floppy image first see if that detects the pcmcia CD-ROM, hopefully it will.

bubazoo

Group: Members
Posts: 14
Joined: Mar. 2006

Posted: Mar. 05 2006,21:33

I am also unable to find instructions for loadlin install in the dsL wiki, what does that mean?

dmizzel

Group: Members
Posts: 112
Joined: April 2005

Posted: Mar. 15 2006,03:20

You could try to do it Gorilla style!
I have an old toshiba tecra730cdt which does not support booting from cd, so I pulled out the hard drive and bought an adapter that converts a laptop ide to a regular ide (about $5). inserted the laptop drive into another computer that boots from cd, and formated and partitioned the drive. Then did a frugal install and stuck it back in the laptop, reboot... there ya go.

Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

4 replies since Mar. 04 2006,23:59

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » DSL Tips and Tricks » installation on old thinkpad