Re: installing debian from iomega zip (ppa)

[Brendan J Simon <brendan.simon@bigpond.com>]

I installed a debian system on a PowerMac G4 some time ago.  I had to do 
this because there were no boot CDs available at that time and of course 
the PowerMac does not have a floppy drive.  You can check the 
debian-powerpc archives for details of how to do it.  Mail from Ethan 
Benson was the most helpful.  Here is a summary (from my memory so it 
might not be 100% accurate).

Put a kernel on the zip disk.
Put baseXXX.tgz on zip disk.
Put the drivers.tgz on zip disk.

Get your bootroms to load the kernel.  I don't think you can do this 
directly with the PC BIOS.  I could with the PowerMac OpenFirmware 
prompt.  For an Intel PC, you may have to setup lilo on a floppy.  
Infact, you should be able to use the standard boot floppies.  You 
should be able to give a root=/dev/hdc (or whatever the zip drive is).  
Play around with these ideas.

Good luck,
Brendan Simon.



i4G0 wrote:

> well, i need help. i'd like to install a debian system on my laptop.
> that's an old Compaq Contura 410c
> it has 8mb ram, 330mb hd. it's a 486 cpu. take a look at if you want to get 
> more infos.
> i have an Iomega Zip unit.. 
> someone else installed a debian system from a zip disk? someone can help me 
> installing it?
> my problem is: how can i make a working ramdisk on my zip?
> and also: how can i create a bootdisk that makes the zip work?
> finally: which .deb should i choose? which is the base system? ftp archives? 
> where?
> thank you anticipately.