Re: debuser- Debian on Olivetti PCS 42P
Johan Andersson wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I'm trying to install debian on an old Olivetti computer. It has no network
> access but a quad speed cd-rom. But this this cd (Panasonic CR-562) uses a
> strange controllercard and therefore I can't boot of the cd. I have tried
> floppies but the computer only halts with the message 'Boot failed'. Since
> floppies seems to be the only alternative for me to get the base system on
> the computer so I can compile and install the correct driver for the cd I
> was just wondering if anybody know how to solve this. The computer only has
> a i486 50MHz, 200Mb harddrive, 16Mb RAM and windows 95 right now.
Probably, the floppies are your best bet, still. The Linux floppy
format
is not as robust as the DOS system though, I don't exactly understand
why,
but it has something to do with tolerating bad floppy media (I think the
Linux
system assumes perfect media -- no bad sectors). Anyway, you have to
pick
really good disks: probably buy new ones, and not bulk. Another thing
you
can do is take your existing disks, and run chkdsk (from DOS) on them --
only select disks that have no bad sectors.
Then use rawrite and follow the instructions for creating your rescue
disk
and base-system install disks.
Of course, if the disk drive is actually bad, there's nothing you can do
but
replace it. Test this by trying to boot your Debian Rescue floppy on
another
computer (assuming you can get access to one). It won't overwrite your
system
so long as you stop it after the startup message comes up.
I'm also assuming you don't have a problem with the BIOS letting you
boot off
of the floppy. On my system, the BIOS menu lets you determine which
drives
are tried for booting. If you were booting off the hard drive, I'm
assuming
your Windows would come up, or it would be otherwise obvious that it
wasn't
trying to boot off of the floppy.
You might want to check the Linux hardware HOWTOs to make sure that
drivers
exist for your CD drive since you say it's unusual (and a proprietary
interface). Actually being able to boot from CD is also a function of
your
BIOS as well as the drive, of course. Most 486 BIOS's can't do it.
Nicely, Debian has a lot of CD interfaces supported in the base system,
so
you might get lucky that way.
Anyway, good luck.
>
> Best regards
> Johan
--
Terry Hancock
hancock@earthlink.net
Reply to: