Installing Linux without a CD-ROM?

Hi there,

I am definitely not a techie.  My son obtained a redundant laptop with no software and apparently a wiped hard-drive.  I thought to install Linux.  
First of all I installed MS-DOS 5 from a old disk I had.  This installed on the hard-drive wich it now recognised, but it  didn't recognise the CD-ROM drive.  I identified the CD-ROM as a QSI 242 but I haven't found a driver.  Installing 3 diffrent generic drivers, and following the instructions of modifying autexec.bat and config.sys, have all been unsuccessful.

The driver forum has been taken over by poker and ringtones.  Can anyone help?

If I can't use the CD drive is there any other way of installing Linux?

It can be done.  It can be very difficult!  Do you have a floppy drive for this laptop?  Can you boot from it?  I think SuSE might still provide boot floppies - it takes a few, and can be painfully slow, but it works.

[Moderator]

Some specs on the machine and the brand would be helpful in determining what will run. If it has 8 meg. of RAM, then DOS seems a better plan, and infinitely easier to do.

More info needed.

The m/c is a Tiny ( a defunct British company)  A440.  On the front it says it has a Celeron processor.  Dir says it has 785M free memory after DOS is installed.  It was originally set up with Windows 98.  If I need any more info that DOS can provide I need help in getting it as I haven't used DOS for 10 years and all the manuals have been ditched.

[Moderator]

Can you get into the BIOS/setup screen to view the actual components? The key combo to be pressed to get there is probably displayed onscreen when the machine starts.

Tiny A440 laptops were originally manufactured by FIC (First International Computers), in Hong Kong. The Tiny A series range includes the A320, A340, A360, and others, they are all manufactured by FIC. They were then shipped to other manufacturers, which stuck their own badges on them. Advent and Tiny are the ones known using A440's.

As for the RAM, usually they came fitted with one stick of 128. The maximum memory the A440 can take is 256MB, according to FIC's datasheets, but they may take more.  The RAM needed is SO-DIMM PC-133 144 pins

Can you boot with a Win98 boot disk? (free at www.bootdisk.com)

Nothing to see at start-up that would give any info

And your responses to the other questions...?

Sorry, I missed the question about the boot disk.

I downloaded boot98.exe onto a 3.5".  The m/c won't start up from it - non-system disk in drive - and when i try to run the boot98 after starting up with DOS it says This program cannot run in DOS mode.

Am I doing this right?

[Moderator]

Download the file to your hard drive and double click on it with a formatted floppy in the drive. THAT will be your boot disk.

Thanx, that works.  Now I have a CDROM drive.

[Moderator]

Glad you are all fixed up and thanks for posting back.  

Once you get all up and running download and run Everest Home and run the Report (under the Help Menu Button) and print it out. You may want to post it here as well for our edification as well. The motherboard model wil be important for any future plans and ALL of that info will be necessary to get drivers, etc.

Ok, next problem.  I have downloaded Everest Home and written it onto a RW CD.  When I try to run Everest on the Tiny it comes up with:-
CDR103: CDROM not High Sierra or ISO-9660 format reading Drive E

I can't see any way of changing the format on my WXP m/c

Any clues for the clueless?

[Moderator]

What is the make and model of the drive? WHat is the BIOS date? What is the motherboard model shown?

Can you try using a real CD instead of a CDRW?

The drive is a QSI CdROM 242.
The BIOS info is what I was trying to load Everest to find out.

Yes, it does work with a commercial data CDROM.  Is it anything to do with speed?  My CD-RW box says 'For Hi-Speed drives only'  but the Tiny drive will read an older, slower speed CD-RW.  I have no empty slower CDRWs to hand or any CDRs so I'll have to pop down the store to get some if this is the answer.

[Moderator]

It may work just fine with a standard CDR. Here's some info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660

I managed to get the unzipped Everest files onto a readable CDR but when i try to run everest.exe on the Tiny it says 'this program cannot be run in Dos mode'

Am i running the right program?

[Moderator]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Everest is a Windows based program, so some version of Windows must be installed to use it.

Can you get to the BIOS pressing the Delete key during boot? It is a FIC mainboard and that is how most of them work. You may be able to make the CD bootable.

Sadly reatedly pressing the DEL key during bootup has no effect.  How important is it to know what the BIOS is?  I think the m/c is around the 2001/2 time.

At a pinch I can install Windows 3.1, which I have on 3.5"

ah, well, and so to bed......

[Moderator]

Well, from the Win98 boot disk you can run mem/c and see how much RAM is installed on the machine

C:\dir will give you the size of the drive. If running 3.1 the rest is unimportant.

Good  morning from UK.

I had to download mem.exe but this is what it produces:-
Mem  type         total        used      free
Conventianal     638K         88K      550K
Upper                   0K           0K         0K
Reserved              0K           0K          0K
XMS             56,256K     2,112K  54,694K
Total Memory56,894K     2,200K  54,694K


dir of C:  gives 785,694,720 bytes free

Loading up Win 3.1 would only be a last resort or if it could provide some information that would enable me to start again and use Linux.

So do I now have enough information to decide if I can try to use Linux as an operating system with associated General purpose software,  and if so what would you recommend?