Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[MU]

This is a very small and light subnotebook with Windows ME.
It has a Pentium 500 and 128 MB of Ram.
It uses a savage graficschip.
In Muppy008 I can play descent2 with accelleration, but tuxracer crashes X.

You can install a maximum of 192 MB, but the modules might be difficult to get.
With 128 MB it is a bit slow, but usable. Firefox needs 45 seconds to launch.
If you have the choice, get a IBM T 21 instead with 256 MB. That is much faster.

I bought the portege used for only 130 Euro, it had no floppy, CDROM or docking bay.
There is just a USB-port to use a USB-stick to copy files from another computer.

After you installed Puppy, I suggest you run gparted, to resize the Windows-Partition.
Muppy008 works with 128 MB of Ram, but larger applications simply might freeze your computer.
Decrease it by 600 MB, then create a new partition as swap.

My Portege already had two partitions c:\ and d:\, so I decreased d:\.

Here are now the instructions, I also include them in the attached zip.

readme-puppy.txt:
-------------------------------
Installing Puppy on a Toshiba Portege 3440 without optical drives

Windows ME has no Dos-mode, but it is just hidden.
We need Dos to start a Linux-loader, because without a Boot-CD or floppy we cannot install a bootmanager.

Extract this zip in C:\
In the explorer, klick on c:\muppy008\dos4me\setup.exe
This will reactivate the DOS-Mode for WinME.
Use that at own risk!
I had no problems with it, but modifying a operating system is always dangerous, if you have no other boot-device than the harddisk!


Different to other solutions, it does not add a new shell, it just changes one byte.
Details:
http://www.pcwelt.de/start/software_os/windows/praxis/15834/

Now copy your Puppy files to c:\muppy008

For Muppy008, these are:
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
msy_080.sfs
zmsy_080.sfs

For Puppy 3.01 this would be (did not test myself):
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
pup_301.sfs
zdrv_301.sfs

Now create a shortcut on your desktop:
c:\windows\wininit.exe

Click on it, then reboot.
Now you have a startmenu to start Windows or Dos.
Use Dos.

Now type:
copy c:\muppy008\m.bat c:\

This simply saves you the need to type long commands in future, and must be done only once.
Now type
m
to start Muppy or Puppy.

This batchfile uses linld097.com to start Puppy.
I had no success with loadlin or grub4dos.

When you reboot from Puppy, Windows ME will start again.
So you must click on your shortcut again, to start in Dos-Mode.
PC-Welt says, you can start always with the boot-menu, if you add c:\windows\wininit.exe to the autostart-folder of windows.
Where is that?

...
found:
c:\windows\all users\startmenu\programs\autostart or similar (I have a german windows).
But this just forces the boot-menu after you reboot from windows.
To force it to appear after you reboot Puppy, edit c:\m.bat
Add as first line:
echo > c:\windows\wininit.ini

This creates a empty wininit.ini, that is used as a "detection" if the boot menu shall be displayed or not.


--------------------
Sidenote:
to enter the bios if you need that, hit esc on bootup, then press F1 when you get an error-message. Usually the portege gives no info on how to reach the bios.
But even when I enabled USB-FDD support there, I could not boot from my USB-Sticks.
So I used the method described above with linld to boot Puppy.

Sidenote2:
If you use xorg, choose 1024x768x16
With a colordepth of 24, I get white "sprinkles" on the display after a while.

Sidenote3:
don't intend to use OpenOffice.
It starts, but very slow.
Needs 5 minutes or so to launch.
Use Abiword whenever possible.

Mark

[MU]

The next day I often encountered Kernel-Errors using linld097.com.
I had to start and exit Windows first, before I could boot Puppy.

I then found an older grub.exe in my archives, that works fine.

Extract to c:\

It has these files in c:\muppy008:
grub.exe
menu.lst
p.bat
puppy.bat
readme.txt

------------------
this is readme.txt:
copy p.bat to c:\ or a folder in your PATH (like c:\windows)


Then start your computer in Dos-mode, and type
p

you must have your puppy-files in c:\muppy008

Puppy 301:
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
pup_301.sfs
zdrv_301.sfs

Muppy 008:
vmlinuz
initrd.gz
msy_080.sfs
zmsy_080.sfs

Mark

muppy008-grub.exe.tar.gz (54 kb)
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?mode=attach&id=7416

It does not include the patch for WinME, so use this in addition to the other zip if you need the patch.

See also this thread, for Win98:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=25512