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Topic: thinkpad with no cdrom, How to install on a optical-drive-less< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
zenlunatic Offline





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Posts: 3
Joined: May 2006
Posted: May 13 2006,23:52 QUOTE
I am winning a bid on a 10" thinkpad.  Its not too old of a machine: 300mhz 64mb ram.  I think DSL will run on it nicely.  However the only problem is that the machine can only boot from the ibm external floppy; it doesn't have a cdrom drive and I have confirmed it cannot boot from USB.

At this point I think my only option is to boot it from floppy because I have no idea what usb drives it supports to boot from.  I might be able to find a parallel cdrom drive I was reading about.  So if anyone knows how to get a thinkpad 240 to boot from a external usb drive lket me know, otherwise lets just focus on the floppy.

So I can boot from floppy but how do I do this.  Can I get the floppy kernel to recognize my pcmcia wireless card (i bought a card that the free software foundation recommended because it works with free drivers).  So as long as that support is in the kernel I'm pretty sure I can boot from floppy and start a net install.  The other option I'm thinking of is booting from floppy and getting the kernel to see a usb cdrom drive from there.  Do you think this will be an option?

Does anyone have any suggestions?  I really don't want to install the whole 50mb from floppy.
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roberts Offline





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Joined: Oct. 2003
Posted: May 14 2006,03:08 QUOTE
The IBM Thinkpad 240 is a wonderful machine for DSL.

First use any other machine to get DSL installed on a pendrive.
Or buy one from the DSL store.

Then download and make the DSL boot floppy.

Plug the pendrive into the single usb slot and have the external floppy drive plugged in with the DSL boot usb floppy.

Power on the 240 and it will boot from external floppy and will find and load the pendrive.

Boot using the fb800x600 boot code.

Since the USB is 1.1 it will be slow, plus you won't want to use it this way. So...

Or even better...

Use cfdisk or fdisk and make linux swap and regular linux partitions on the hard drive. Then do a frugal grub install to hard drive.

When prompted select install from (P)endrive.

-----

A bit of DSL history....

The winmodem for DSL was made for the Thinkpad 240 winmodem.

The install from pendrive, was made while using and enjoying the Thnkpad 240.

It is a tiny ultra light subnote and at 800x600 is very nice.
Everything works out of the box.
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eldepeche Offline





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Posts: 7
Joined: May 2006
Posted: May 20 2006,03:56 QUOTE
If you just copy the files from the CD image to the root directory on the hard drive, the DSL boot disk will find them and boot. Then you can do a hard drive install.
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2 replies since May 13 2006,23:52 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

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