[ale] Getting Linux on an old laptop with only floppy drive and 100 MB Iomega zip drive

Preston Boyington preston.lists at gmail.com
Tue Jan 29 11:27:53 EST 2008


dhhoward at comcast.net wrote:
> I've got an old Win98 Toshiba satellite that I want to put Linux on, but no CD ROM drive and no Internet, but I can get it to talk to an old Iomega 100 MB Zip drive.  Any way to take an Ubuntu CD-ROM iso image and chop it up into 100 MB chunks for copying to the laptop or installing from the Zip drive?
> 
> Thanks, 
> Daniel

i can think of a couple of ways, but the easiest is if you have a pcmcia 
wireless card or a USB external cdrom.  you could even use a USB thumb 
drive to install from.

also i would suggest that if you _do_ go with ubuntu that you use their 
"x" version (think it uses xfce as the desktop) since it will be easier 
on the resources.

if this were me i would probably boot from a floppy (hopefully it has 
one) and then use the USB key to do a network install using the wireless 
card from a coffee shop somewhere.

i can probably find some usb network howtos online if you want to go in 
that direction.

i can see the zip drive being a lot more effort than most people want to 
go through for an install... unless you are like me and want to tell 
people "yep, and installed if from an old zip drive i had laying around!"

let us know what you decide.

Preston

-- 
Arrant Drivel - really, it's just trash...
http://www.arrantdrivel.com/



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