Re: HELP: formatting the hard drive
On Tue, 19 Aug 1997, Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro wrote:
> Hello Debians.
Hi.
> I just purchased a CD with Debian on it and I wanted to install it
> on my 486DX-2. It has 8 MB of RAM and two HD of 220 MB each. From
> what I read, it should be just enough for Linux to run. Can anyone
> confirm/suggest anything with a system this low?
I can confirm that it is enough, but that depends on what you want to run
on the machine. I suggest that you start with the default packages minus
everything related to news such as inews and inn. You probably can
install X, but I would keep it light--only one Xserver, and only the
minimum in fonts and documentation. Do not install any dev packages
unless and until you know you need them.
> I also have a P133 with 16MB of ram. I originally installed Linux
> on this machine, but I now need it for CAD. I would like to remove
> Linux from it but I have been unable via standard methods (ie:
> bootable floppy to format HD). Any suggestions on how I can format
> the hard drive so that I can installed (*yikes*) Windows '95?
If you can get your hands on some DOS system floppies, you can do the
following: boot into DOS, run FDISK.EXE and delete all the partitions on
the HD. Rewrite the partition table with one DOS FAT partition. Reboot
again so the partition table will be read, and then use the command
"FORMAT C:". You will need to have a DOS floppy with FDISK and FORMAT.
At this point, or even after you simply use FDISK, you should be able to
use a Win '95 install floppy for the OEM version or whatever setup disk
you might have (DOS, Win 3.1, etc.).
There are other radical approaches if you don't want to save any data on
your HD.
Syrus.
P.S. I've been told that you can install DOS, create a file called
win386.bin in C:\, and then the Win '95 upgrade CD will install Win '95
with no Win 3.1 present. I've never tried this though, so I don't know if
it works.
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Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu> UCSD Physics Dept.
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