Getting Puppy onto an OLD Dell laptop.

Booting, installing, newbie
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starhawk
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#21 Post by starhawk »

...actually, I think I had a small brain fart in that last post.

Here's what you do (this assumes that Win98 works and so does the floppy drive, AND you go get a working disk -- you only need one)...

Get RawWrite for Windows (rename file to rawwrite.zip) and unzip it* --> http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite
Get Plop Boot Manager (rename file to plopboot.zip) and unzip it* --> http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

Stuff a (working) floppy in the drive and run RawWrite. You want to find the plpbtin.img file within the unzipped Plop Boot Manager download -- should be in a folder labeled Install. That is the floppy boot image. Let RawWrite do its thing and at the other end you should have a working boot floppy.

*if you need an unzip program, I recommend pkunzip. Go here and click on the word "here" in "If you don't have...". Download it to the root of the C:\ drive. To use it, first run the EXE (a self-extractor) from within a DOS window. To unzip a file type pkunzip filename.zip (so for RawWrite, if you followed my instructions and renamed the file, you would type pkunzip rawwrite.zip).

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Burn_IT
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#22 Post by Burn_IT »

That will only produce a working diskette if the diskette itself or the drive is OK.
He needs to get a working diskette in that machine.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

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rcrsn51
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#23 Post by rcrsn51 »

This is getting confusing. Originally, BJF was making a boot diskette on a Linux machine with a USB floppy drive and the dd command.

Then he switched to formatting a diskette through DOS on the target machine.

If these diskettes are any good, then Puppy should have detected the USB floppy drive and made a desktop icon. Then the dd command should have worked.

I suspect that the floppy drive on the target machine is bad. That's not unusual.

You can format the diskettes through the USB drive in Puppy with:

Code: Select all

ufiformat /dev/sdb
mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb    #use an upper-case 'eye'

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8-bit
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#24 Post by 8-bit »

In all of this and formatting of a floppy disk, one could also use the GUI I made for formatting floppy disks be they internal or USB external ones.
It has the option to format a 1.44meg disk as a 720K disk also.
But...
If one wants to make a specific floppy from an image, the dd command is good.
But again, one wants to be sure that they know how to use the dd command since with the wrong parameters, one could end up formatting their hard drive as a floppy and in effect, overwrite anything and everything on it.
My formatter can be found at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=23982

starhawk
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#25 Post by starhawk »

If you ever get this working, take a look here... I didn't know about this :oops: it takes a lot of work away.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=78941

mini-jaguar
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#26 Post by mini-jaguar »

Once you get the floppy drive straightened out, you might want to try MenuetOS or KolibriOS, runs off of one diskette: http://kolibrios.org/en/

BJF
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#27 Post by BJF »

Sorry. Been away.
PupnGo looks like the most likely contender. I have burnt the .iso to CD and run it on a Compaq NX9005 with 256Mb as a LiveCD, and it's FAST! And pretty. Seems to have all the fruit too.
BUT: Can't get any sense out of the A:\ drive. Not with these floppies anyway. I've tried formatting them in Puppeee, but the Dell won't recognise them as formatted and says there's something wrong with the bit where system files ought to go if I ask for a system disk.
So if I'm prepared to toss Win 98, does anyone have a plan to get PupnGo to install itself from either a non-booting CD by somehow getting a sympathetic bootloader aboard to get the CD drive recognised, or by copying PupnGo system files into a partition and formatting and installing out onto the rest of the HDD from there? I have totally no idea how to make Grub4DOS do anything meaningful now that I have it unpacked onto a CD, and also in a folder on C:\ drive.

Thanks.

starhawk
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#28 Post by starhawk »

Pull the hard drive and install it in another system. You will need an IDE adapter that converts the 44pin (2mm spacing) connector on the laptop's drive to a 40pin (2.54mm/0.1" spacing) connector for a desktop. You will also likely need a spare berg connector (floppy power connector) off your power supply. Make sure that the power connection is not at all loose. (Especially if it is a regular Molex --optical drive-- style, the pins can be loose and that WILL kill the drive fairly quickly. I've done it!)

Boot pUPnGO. Install to the drive.

Then put the drive back in the laptop.

If your Compaq NX9005 has a USB port or two, you can skip the above converter (cheap on eBay BTW) and get a different one -- a USB to IDE/SATA drive adapter (type in "usb ide sata" on eBay and they'll pop right up). A word about eBay: don't buy stuff from Hong Kong, it'll take a literal month to show up AND you might have to pay customs fees! Get it from the sellers who say "shipped from USA" because they've already gone through that mess so that you don't have to ;)

The USB IDE/SATA adapter will probably come with a driver CD (or a link to a download) that you do not need at all. I've NEVER needed that driver!

BJF
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#29 Post by BJF »

This might be a quiet whoo-hoo moment!
The NX has usb ports. There's a Dell and a Compaq desktop in the study/server room with ports and they all run various flavours of PCLinuxOS, and there's the Eeep with Jemimah's Puppeee aboard that talks to a usb CD drive happily and has ports all over the place. It's sounding like the way to go. Of course the Dell Laptop drive matches nothing I have on hand at all. Time to go shopping.....
Thanks Starhawk.

BJF
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#30 Post by BJF »

One deep and meaningful thought: the HDD is an 1997 item it says, and has a connector that takes the form of pins on about 1mm spacing arranged top and bottom inside a hollow socket 25mm x 4mm (approximately). That is quite different to the IDE drive in the 2005 NX9005 Compaq. I don't like it when you say "EEK!" like that. It's disturbing. Does that description mean that finding an adapter is not going to be a simple matter? :roll:

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greengeek
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#31 Post by greengeek »

BJF wrote:the HDD is an 1997 item it says, and has a connector that takes the form of pins on about 1mm spacing arranged top and bottom inside a hollow socket 25mm x 4mm (approximately)
Any chance of posting a pic of that connector?

Mercedes350se
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Re: Getting Puppy onto an OLD Dell laptop.

#32 Post by Mercedes350se »

BJF wrote: ... but the optical drive doesn't boot. ...
Back in the dark ages there was a small floppy program (DOS?) that allowed selection of which device to boot from regardless of the system BIOS. I tried to load DeLi Linux this way on my 486 machine which did have an optical drive. Getting that, the optical drive, to work was a saga as I recall!.

I know you are unable to format a floppy but If you are really desperate I could "possibly" find the floppy and post it to you. I do have 98se installed on the other hard drive.

I am on the big island to the West of you.

Sylvander
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Re: Getting Puppy onto an OLD Dell laptop.

#33 Post by Sylvander »

Mercedes350se wrote:Back in the dark ages there was a small floppy program (DOS?) that allowed selection of which device to boot from regardless of the system BIOS
See SBM Boot Manager = SBM = "Smart Boot Manager".

It's a bootable floppy.
You boot the floppy...
It detects all the bootable devices and displays them in a menu...
You choose the bootable optical disk in its drive...
If the drive isn't yet ready with a bootable disk in place [BIOS communication with the drive not yet->(complete, and file system on disk detected/readable)] the attempt will fail [big red warning displayed].
Wait 'till the optical drive LED stops blinking, and retry.
When the BIOS has established communication with the drive the attempt should succeed.

BJF
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#34 Post by BJF »

Sylvander: I am rumbling about with Grub4DOS and SBM both of which I can get onto the laptop via the CD, but I have no idea if they can or how to make them work, except for a floppy installation. The readme instructions pass some distance above this noob's head. If it can be done from files loaded onto C:\ then some hand-holding would be required.
Mercedes: I have a drawer of useful things going back years that needs investigation as it just might (cross fingers) have a data or application flop that goes back to my 98 years. If not, may I call upon you in the West Island and take up your offer please?
All: I'll see about a picture of the mysterious HDD socket for identification. Of course if the HDD gives up, where would I ever get another???

Thanks again.

starhawk
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#35 Post by starhawk »

It's a very standard hard drive connector, attached to a little bit of Dell wizardry that is fooling you.

What you have is not one part, but TWO. You have a hard drive in a metal and plastic shell called a "caddy". Here's how to dismantle it. Read the instructions CAREFULLY, this thing (stupidly) has a fragile part in it.

Take the four screws off the sides (and SAVE THEM CAREFULLY -- they are tiny and you will need them to put the drive back in later!). Should be two per side. Then tilt the hard drive so that the front (where the black plastic bezel is) is up a little.

You will see a brown bit of what appears to be circuitry at the back of the drive. This is a (rather fragile, unfortunately) flexible PCB connecting what's on the back of the drive to that special connector you mentioned.

Holding the flexible PCB and the connector where it attaches to the drive, so you don't rip it to bits, wiggle and tug the drive off the adapter.

You really do need to be careful, as that flexible PCB can rip very easily -- and there is no way to repair it except getting a replacement. The good news is that if you do rip it, replacements are cheap on eBay -- in the States they are $5.99 for a three-pack (or $5.35 if you only want one). That's US dollars of course.

Once you get the drive off so that you've got hopefully two parts and not three (which would be caddy and most of the adapter, the rest of the adapter that came off with the drive, and the drive itself) you'll see that it's got a standard 44pin connector as described.

...as for the floppy drive: give it up man, that drive is hosed. If you can get a parts machine from eBay you may be able to replace it, but you'll have to pull the laptop apart -- and that is usually a hair-raising experience the first time you do it. It certainly was for me. Doubly so for old Dell laptops -- jigsaw puzzles got nothing on how these things go together. I have a CPi and I hope I don't have to take it apart again any time soon!

Sylvander
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#36 Post by Sylvander »

BJF wrote:Sylvander: I am rumbling about with Grub4DOS and SBM both of which I can get onto the laptop via the CD, but I have no idea if they can or how to make them work
1.
(a) Download sbm.zip...
(b) save it somewhere convenient...
(c) Unpack sbm.img from within it.

2.
(a) Write the sbm.img image to a floppy disk.
I probably made the SBM bootable floppy I have, years back when working within Windows, but I had a go just now using Slacko-5.3.3.1 using my present USB-connected floppy disk drive.
Used the following dd command using a terminal run within the Xfe folder [/00] holding the sbm.img file.
dd if=sbm.img of=/dev/sdb
[sdb is the name my Slacko has given to the FDD, so that's what I used in the command]
Don't know if my present brand new PC would boot a bootable floppy residing inside a USB-connected FDD. :?
So I cannot test it, although the floppy now seems to have the files written to it.

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greengeek
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#37 Post by greengeek »

BJF wrote: I have a drawer of useful things going back years that needs investigation as it just might (cross fingers) have a data or application flop that goes back to my 98 years. If not, may I call upon you in the West Island and take up your offer please?
Which 98 floppy are you looking for? I have a W98 startup floppy if that is of any use. And that 32mb edo if you are still interested (although the module seems taller than you mentioned)

BJF
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#38 Post by BJF »

Dear All: In summary hopefully covering the high spots...
Laptop boots either from floppy or HDD. Win98 uses a different, non-legacy, floppy format(?). -Post 2000 formatted floppies aren't recognised or formatted by laptop. Seemingly only IBM format post 2000 floppies are about now or produced by formatting app's. Data written to one cannot be read by laptop. Wrong format. CD drive works but is non-booting. BIOS won't allow it. A BIOS flash, even if available, needs the floppy drive active. Data can be written to 98 via CD but not accessed as a Live CD. A Boot Manager can therefore be written onto the HDD but presumably not installed on it to supplant the WinBoot and access the CD as a bootable medium. Some hope lies in obtaining a few 98-formatted floppies including a start-up disk PROVIDED that it will permit the boot of a Puppy LiveCD, and PROVIDED that putting eg SBM on a 98 floppy doesn't make it unreadable. The solution to that might lie in asking a 98 owner to write a n SBM disk for me. The HDD may yet (thanks for that Starhawk) be able to be plugged into my old Compaq and installed to.
Thanks to all who have joined in with some really useful suggestions. Greengeek: I'll be in touch!

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saintless
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#39 Post by saintless »

Hi, BJF,

check out this option - Puppy linux for Win98. From what I read Puppy could be started from ms-dos direct or from Win98. At least you will see if it works for your hardware:
http://puppylinux.dreamhosters.com/vers ... /puppy.htm
I will write one more time your easiest option to have Puppy on this laptop. Choose some puppy version and copy the files in a folder on your hard drive from Win98.
Install Grub4Dos from here and try to find the right boot code to boot puppy. I'm sure someone who has grub4dos will help you with the right boot code.

BTW PupNgo is not easy to boot this way as frugal install with grub. You might or might not be able to boot it with grub4dos. It has some problem finding the main sfs file when it boots from grub legacy. I've tested this my self and it is also written in the forum thread.

Cheers

Mercedes350se
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#40 Post by Mercedes350se »

OK. I have Smart Boot Manager on a floppy that was formatted under 98se.

PM your details and I will post it across to you.

Using the floppy is a cinch - I will include details with it.

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