Drive down to MPC, buy a $10 laptop 44pin->desktop 40pin IDE adapter, install on desktop, transplant laptop drive back to the laptop. presto. On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 10:11 -0500, Chris Schumann wrote: > > 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 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list