Installing linux on old pc

[Chess007]

I have a Packard Bell Axcel 3510. It has 8mb ram and a pentium chip. also has a dlink network card.

I have redhat 6.2 but I can't install it. Reason being is the bios on the pc won't boot from cd. I tried a 32bit boot img (put on a 3.5 1.44 floppy) to boot from that and then the cd but that didn't work. The bios detects the cd drive, but once it boots into win95 , the cd drive icon doesn't show up.

So far, the only way i've got the cd drive to work, is boot from a win98 startup disk.

I booted from the win98 start up disk, and

cd e:

dir /p

and it shows the files on the redhat disk.

Is there a way to install redhat after i've booted with the win98 startup disk?

Also, will the redhat install process convert a fat 16 file system to ext2 ? (the linux file system) If not, then how do I convert it?

I just wanna use the pc to surf the net. Thanks in advance for the help. :)

[drummerboy195]

I would think that any sort of "modern" desktop distro such as the one you mentioned would be overloading the system. Given this, and the lack of a non-booting cd drive, i would head on over to www.linux.org and go to the disto search, and look for minimalist distros.

[ph34r]

boot wtih the win98 floppy, get the cd drive working. change to teh cd drive letter (probably d:) and look in the dosutils directory - there is an autoboot.bat file. run that and you should be good to go.

[Chess007]

"boot wtih the win98 floppy, get the cd drive working. change to teh cd drive letter (probably d and look in the dosutils directory - there is an autoboot.bat file. run that and you should be good to go."

Thanks. :) After running that it says

Image file not found. Please enter name of kernel image file followed by optional command line parameters for linux (e.g. root=xxxx) or "empty string" to abort.

What should I type here?

Here's what the BOOT directory contains:

. <DIR>
.. <DIR>
CD B 1,024
INITRD32 IMG 580,039
INITRD64 IMG 773,091
SECOND B 57,856
TRANS TBL 288
VMLINUX3 GZ 651,785
VMLINUX6 GZ 811,480
7 file(s)
2 dir(s)

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Chess007

Image file not found. Please enter name of kernel image file followed by optional command line parameters for linux (e.g. root=xxxx) or "empty string" to abort.

What should I type here?

Here's what the BOOT directory contains:

. <DIR>
.. <DIR>
CD B 1,024
INITRD32 IMG 580,039
INITRD64 IMG 773,091
SECOND B 57,856
TRANS TBL 288
VMLINUX3 GZ 651,785
VMLINUX6 GZ 811,480
7 file(s)
2 dir(s)

I would say to first try VMLINUX3 and if that doesn't work, use VMLINUX6.

Is your cdrom connected to the onboard IDE controller or the IDE connector on the soundcard? Some older computers have the cdrom attached to the soundcard of which you would then need to use a different floppy bootdisk image. The readme's in the floppy image directory on the installation cd should explain.

[Chess007]

"Image file not found. Please enter name of kernel image file followed by optional command line parameters for linux (e.g. root=xxxx) or "empty string" to abort."


At that point, I tried typeing

VMLINUX3

and then pressing enter, but that just brings up the same message.


Typing in

VMLINUX6

then pressing enter also brings up the same message. Do i need to type some kind of command...?

i.e.

INSTALL VMLINUX

then press enter ?


"Is your cdrom connected to the onboard IDE controller or the IDE connector on the soundcard?"
Its connected to an ide on the motherboard.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Chess007
"Image file not found. Please enter name of kernel image file followed by optional command line parameters for linux (e.g. root=xxxx) or "empty string" to abort."


At that point, I tried typeing

VMLINUX3

and then pressing enter, but that just brings up the same message.



I guess it wants you to type

root=VMLINUX3

or

root=/path/to/VMLINUX3

Are you sure you are using the correct bootdisk floppy image? Have you read the readme's in the bootdisk image directory on the installation cd?

[Chess007]

Nope those 2 methods don't work either. And yes I have read the read me, but I have no clue what a SPARC is. Here's the read me

Floppy booting images:
boot32.img - for any 32bit SPARC, all types of installations
boot64.img - for any 64bit SPARC, CD-ROM and harddisk installations
boot-net64.img - for any 64bit SPARC, NFS, FTP or HTTP installations

Network booting images:
tftp32.img - for any 32bit SPARC, all types of installations
tftp64.img - for any 64bit SPARC, all types of installations

Due to a bug in the firmware of most UltraSPARC computers manufactured by
SMCC (UltraAX and UltraAXi should work just fine), booting from the floppy
drive does not work. Therefore, boot64.img and boot-net64.img files will
not work on most systems UltraSPARC systems. Boot from the CD-Rom or
tftp64.img if boot64.img or boot-net64.img does not work on your system.


Booting with a bootdisk (that has the boot32.img file on it - written to it by ra write) causes the computer to go through the bio's "cd rom detected ect" then it beeps twice and starts back at the begining, like it got turned off then back on again.

Also, I found out another interesting issue The files arent VMLINUX3 and VMLINUX6 but rather VMLINUX32 and VMLINUX64 - dos cuts off that last # in the filename. any ideas?

[ph34r]

Looks like you have the wrong cds for your computer. You want an i386 or x86 cd, not the SPARC one (its different - like a mac different, but different than a mac)

[Chess007]

Thanks. :) Does anyone know where i can find "old" (i.e. redhat 6 or so) iso's?

[WonderBoutLinux]

I would advice U to use DamnSmall Linux (DSL). It is very small (not more than 50 mb) and runs very good on old computer. Although I dunno how good U must be to use, U can try it. I'm a newbie in Linux and I have it! It works fine, but it seems to be very much for me;) I don't wanna scare U but U can try. The iso file that U download is also a live cd. So if U are happy with, U can just install it on ur PC.

Go to www.damnsmalllinux.org and download it!

I don't garanty that it is going to detect ur network card, for my side it didn't detect my Lucent modem (I56LVP) and I'm still looking for a way to make it work. My problem is that I don't know how to use the driver that I downloaded for the modem, btw do U know how to make a driver work?

If U don't like Damnsmall Linux, U can always try Peanut. Many people say that it is kind of good to!

go to http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/

Good luck!

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Chess007
Thanks. :) Does anyone know where i can find "old" (i.e. redhat 6 or so) iso's?

6.2 ISO's.

http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/6.2/en/iso/i386/

Just had to go to Redhat's ftp servers to find. :)