Puppy on an ol

[dannyboyw]

I am trying to install Puppy Linux on an old clunker. I am getting th error below during boot. I ultimately want to load this so it runs from CD. I know the CD-ROM works because I successfully loaded WinXP on this machine, but it was ungodly slow. In the end this machine is going to end up as a type writer. I am sending it to a kid in Mexico so he can type his papers on it in Open office hopefully in Spanish.

I want to wipeout all the WinXP stuff and have this be a pure Puppy Linux machine (i.e. boot to Puppy w/o the CD). Is this possible? Is this the OS for this ol' timer?

I also want to know about the possibilities of having different languages with this OS


ide-cd: cmd 0x28 timed out
hdc: DMA interrupt recovery
hdc: lost interrupt
hdc: status error: status 0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hdc: drive not ready


Sys Stats:
Dell Inspirion 3200
233mHz Pent. II Proc. with MMX
64MB RAM

[Flash]

64 MB is not enough RAM for Puppy to boot from the CD. You need to create a swap partition on the hard drive or add more RAM (to a minimum of 128 MB) for Puppy run from CD.

[dannyboyw]

I know what partitions are--- but have not worked with Linux much. How do I get rid of the old WinXP, create a swap partition and install this puppy?

[Flash]

Start -> Control Panel -> Gparted partition manager is the tool you want to use, but you have to boot Puppy to use it. I've never installed Puppy to a hard drive. I can only refer you to posts in the forum by people who have had the same problem as you.

This thread may be what you want. Here's another thread about booting Puppy in a computer with low RAM.

And please, if you figure out a good solution to your problem post it to this forum so others can use it. Don't be like this guy.

[slvrldy17]

There was a piece in the Wiki titled "Puppy Hard Drive Install Instructions" http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyHardDriveInstall that gave a very good basic tutorial in using fdisk to set up partitions - while it was written for the 1.xx series it can be used with Puppy 2.xx with some minor adjustments. It may be that you could boot something like Empty Crust Puppy (1.xx series) or Barebones Puppy (2.xx series) to set up your partitions given their smaller size and memory requirements then once you have swap and a main ext2 or 3 partiton set up and activated reboot with your choice of Puppy 2.xx to install it. Might be worth a look. I've used the method in this tutorial and it does work.

[Sage]

Use my debug script (Search, about six months ago?) to clean your hard disc - it is fireproof, runs from FDD, and also deals with hidden/recovery files and partitions. Although 64Mb is entirely sufficient to boot Puppy series 2, it may be a little slow. You can d/l a stand-alone copy of GParted from the Web; see DistrowWatch.com. Or you can run PQ Partition Magic from two floppies - they know about ext2 and Linux swap. Suggest you limit your swap partition to no more than 64Mb with such low resources. My investigations suggest this is adequate for most applications. Don't forget to format both partitions before installing Puppy - doing this was described (again!) in a parallel thread within the last few days. Search. Older versions of the installer took care of this but not the new series.