Re: creating boot disks
At 07:57 PM 2/12/1999 -0500, mastracco@juno.com wrote:
>I'm trying LINUX for the first time, and was attracted to the straight to
>the point FAQ on installing this program on low memory machines.
>
>The machine is an old Compaq 4/25 Contura laptop with 4 Megs of ram - 130
>Meg of ram. I simply want to make it a machine that can access the net
>with a browser like Netscape - or something similar.
>
>I have downloaded the files recommended to their own directories (e.g.
>base14-1.exe) - but have only successfully extracted the first two image
>disks. I infer from the documenation that 10 in total exist.
>
>After trying to create the third - I get a disk that shows now files in
>Windows 3.1 filemanager.
>
>
>Am I proceeding correctly - or is there something I'm omitting with
>respect to these image disks.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jim Mastracco
>*************************************************************************
>****************************
>FINDINGS - On The Road
><http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/8207/nytletta.htm>
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The file "base14-1.exe" should be "base14-1.bin". I don't know if you made
a typo in your message or if you renamed the file during the download.
Assuming you're downloading to a DOS/Windows box, you'll need to download
several files like this (base14-2.bin, etc, drv1440.bin, resc1440.bin) and
you'll need rawrite.exe (or better, rawrite2.exe). Then at a DOS prompt,
you'll use rawrite to copy the disk image to a floppy. IIRC, rawrite2 will
prompt you for the image name (ie base14-1.bin) and the destination (ie
A:), whereas rawrite will expect this info on the command line.
MAKE SURE you have good quality floppies, and if you have any trouble
reading one of them during the install, use another floppy and remake the
image (and again and again until you get one that works - I've known people
who have had to make four attempts before getting a floppy that works -
floppies are notorious for failing on a linux install).
Once you've got all the floppies made (7 I think), pop the first one in and
reboot. This should start the install process.
I would not expect the floppies to be readable by Win3.1's File Mangler (or
any DOS/Win utilities); I believe the floppies are in a special format, but
I'm not certain on this.
Although you can run Linux on a 4 MB machine, you probably won't be able to
run a graphical web browser (like Netscape) on it, because to my knowledge
there are no graphical web browswers for Linux that will run without X
Windows (I wish someone would develop one). By the time you get X and a
browser installed, the machine would perform at less than a crawl. However,
you can run lynx, which is a text-mode browser. It's very limiting in these
days of the www, but it is at least a partial solution.
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