> From: Jay J <jay-tclug at 3pound.com> > On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:50:23 -0500 (CDT) > "Chris Schumann" <cschumann at twp-llc.com> wrote: > >> Hardware: IBM ThinkPad 750P, 36MB RAM, 12GB HD. LinkSys PCMPC200 wired >> 16-bit 100Mbps PC Card. No CD drive. > ... >> Any tips on getting either working are greatly appreciated. More >> points for getting XFree86 3.3.6 running, as it's the last version >> with the svga driver for the WD90C24 video chip. > > Oops. I forgot to mention: > > As ancient as the 760L ThinkPad is, I was surprised to find it could > boot from PC Card. (Your 750P seems more recent than the 760L, > presumably it too could do this) > > So, more correctly, I booted the netinst image on the Compact Flash in > the PC Card adapter. > > -Jay Thanks for the information, but the 750 is older. It has a 33MHz 80486 CPU. Its boot options are hard disk, floppy and network(!) but I don't have a net-bootable PC Card NIC for it. Thing is, I have done this before, but I didn't document it, so I want to remember or document it this time (www.thinkwiki.org), and I seem to be having more problems this time. I also want it to be useful for others with this hardware, so I would like to avoid requiring hardware like a CF adapter (which I happen to have). The floppies are nearly new, and I've tried several, and they work in other machines, so that's not it. I only need three (Debian) or four (Slackware) floppies before I can install over the network. In Slackware, I think the issue is that heavy use of the NIC when file transfers start just make it go unstable. I've tried the idebus=33 parameter, but that doesn't seem to help. Any other tips for kernel parameters would be awesome. In Debian, I really think it ignores my parameters. After discovering the floppy controller, Slackware says something like "Setting flag 0x01" (I think from "floppy=thinkpad"), but Debian doesn't. Also, Debian seems to ignore my "nopci nousb" flags too, and looks for that hardware. Any tips on getting debian to use the parameters I type would be nice. My other option is to run DOS or Windows to copy the CD's over the network onto a FAT partition and install from there. I didn't need that last time and would like to avoid it again, to keep that room free. Thanks, Chris