Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[deepcore]

Hi.
I am trying to install puppy on an old laptop that is just a little too old for supporting cd boot.

It has got a slot that can be used for either cd or floppy. It is, however, not hotswappable and the computer has to be turned off before switching
between them

Therefore I cannot use the bootdisks that immidiately boots from cd.

I have got and old DOS installed and have got the CD working from there.

If anything is required to be installed on the dos partition from floppy I can do that - but it does require a reboot afterwards to get the cd going.

Does anyone know a dos program that will force a boot from cd (or has got another idea that might work).

Thank you very much.

[Bruce B]

167 downloads and no complaints yet, although I've received a few thanks and compliments

Download Oldbios

[HairyWill]

I may have misunderstood Bruce. Doesn't that require you have access to the floppy and CD. This machine won't support both. Or is your floppy able to boot a frugal install as well?

One possibility is to use dos to do a frugal install ie, copy vmlinuz, initrd.gz, pup_???.sfs and zdrv_???.sfs onto the base of one of your hdd partitions from the CD. Then use a wakepup floppy to boot it
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WakePUP

Disclamer: I've never done anything like this myself.

[deepcore]

Hi bruce.
It does't really work as i can only fit EITHER the diskdrive OR the CD.

I did try to copy the format.com onto the disk and format the harddrive with the /s swithch to transfer your bootprogram to c:
but alas it doesn't work.

any other ideas guys?

[jonyo]

Might you have win98(or5)? What are the 'pute specs? Usb?

[muggins]

deepcore,

there are many different options available to get puppy booting with your computer. See this link, where you can extract oldbios.img to a hard disk, & boot it using grub & memdisk.bin:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24426&sid=7cac9695b09a084459766de984d157c0

If you're using a dos partition, you would probably need grub4dos:

http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/

It might be possible to use autoexec.bat to boot this, rather than dos, but it's been years since I last used autoexec.bat so can't remember usage. (I used to boot puppy, on one partition, using autoexec.bat & tiny.exe, from gujin bootloader, but that was awhile back).

You could also possibly boot puppy, as a frugal install to a dos partition, using linld.exe. See these two links for more ideas:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/InstallingPuppyInMsdos

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Pup4DOS

[GeoW]

Welcome deepcore,

I am currently dual booting Puppy Linux 3.01 with Windows XP ( SP2 )
on an old Dell Dimension XPX R400 w 15G HD.

I got here without owning a Puppy CD or a CD burner. I downloaded
Puppy from the internet, downloaded GRUB4DOS and it's MENU.LST,
modified the system's boot.ini, and I was on my way.

I followed the instructions in ICPUG's Lin'N'WinNewB Project:

http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwin/step00-linnwin.htm

See this thread for advice:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=25139

I only have 1 15G partition on my HD and it's NTFS.

Puppy runs great.

Good Luck,

GeoW

[ICPUG]

Deepcore

Just to add to the comment of GeoW - the method he used might also work for you but you need to follow the instructions for Windows 9X but don't bother having a section for Windows in the Autoexec.bat or config.sys file. I'm making the assumption here that you are using MSDOS on a FAT32 formatted hard disk.

This method uses a frugal install with grub4dos as mentioned by others in this thread. The advantage is that you do not have to install grub4dos in any way to a partition or MBR. Simply download the grub.exe file and call it up as per the instructions.

I would also echo Jonjo's comment that we do not know your machine spec. You say it is pretty old. How much RAM does it have? If it is not 128MB further tinkering may be required to get Puppy to boot , irrespective of method used.

ICPUG

[sabloomer]

I am having the same type of problem. I have an old laptop with 94 mb of ram and a CD drive that doesn't work. I have an exteral CD Drive and I can use with a DOS driver I added to DOS boot disk. I can use the external drive, just not boot from it.

After reading serveral posts on the forum, it looks like "frugal" install is out for me because I don't have enough ram. I need/want to do a full hard disk install and not have to deal with DOS and GRUB after the install. Can I use the external CD drive to copy the contents of the CD to the hard drive and use WakePup? Can I install Puppy to the same drive that contains the source files?

Thanks from the newbie,

sabloomer

[deepcore]

Hi people.
I finally managed to get this running.
I couldn't get the Grub4DOS working using the tutorial, so I did a little digging and found that i could mount the oldbios.img as a virtual floppy drive and boot from it.
(Really gotta look more into this grub thing - it rocks!)

Anyway. I figured that someone might eventually find themselves in the same situation as me.

Hence I have made this zipfile that contains a directory (Boot2Cd)
Extract this to c:\Boot2Cd and run the boot2cd.bat file within, then it should work.

Thanks a lot for helping me along.

(Ps. I really hope you do not mind me repacking your oldbios.img file with grub4dos, Bruce B)

[Bruce B]

[deepcore]

[Bruce B]

[HairyWill]