On Friday 22 October 2004 07:08 pm, you wrote:
> Alan
> Basically I would like to do the same thing but before
> we get started:
>
> 1 did you find out what processer speed these old laps
> are? if so what are they? i've been curious.

The two that work are 360CSE models.  They have 50MHz, 486DX processors.  I'm 
not sure about the others but I think they are of similar speed.

I have not checked all the components you gave me but I know one of the power 
supplies is dead.  [shrug]

> 2 and did you use 8mb of ram?

Yes.  There is base RAM in the computer of 4MB.  So, with the 8MB card they 
have 12MB total.

The one in the best shape that I have been playing with the most actually has 
a memory error in the built-in 4MB according to memtest.  But, it seems to 
work OK anyway.  I have not fully tested the other one.

> 3 how did you make a boot floppy from the slack 8
> disk?

Slack is a bit confusing with the boot floppies and all.  I had to read their 
web pages and howto files several times to understand.  After that it was not 
too bad.

I ended up with 3 install floppies.  First was the "rescue" floppy that just 
loads a kernel to run for the install.  Then you use a boot disk that has the 
the main setup files.  Then, during the setup process, you type PCMCIA at the 
command line to load the third floppy with the PCMCIA drivers so that the 
network card will work.

Images for these floppies are in a couple of directories on the CD (I don't 
remember the directory names right now).  As root, using the command
"cat [imageFile] > /dev/fd0" on my primary workstation wrote the image to the 
floppies.

BTW, there is some disk geometry thing left over and the computer will not 
boot from the hard drive.  LILO prints just the "LI" of it's signon message 
and then freezes.  I have not solved that yet.  I continue to use the install 
boot floppy the the "mount root=/dev/hda1" command to boot the Linux on the 
hard drive.  I'll solve this issue someday, I think.

> and how did you get the floppy to install from an
> image on anohter computer?

I copied the files from the Slack 8 CD to my workstation computer.  The 
directory I used was /shared/Slackware8.  Then I setup the /shared directory 
as an NFS share.  I am sure setting up the NFS would be harder to do by hand 
but I have Webmin on my computer (I highly recommend it.  http://webmin.com).  
The Webmin interface in the browser lets you basically point and click to get 
NFS setup and sharing the directories you want.

Then in the setup process on the laptop, setup asked for the install source.  
One of the choices is NFS.  It then asks for the IP address of the laptop and 
the IP of the NFS server.  Then it asks for the directory.  Trial and error 
showed that I had to use /shared/Slackware8/slakware for the source directory 
on the NFS server.  It then connected and asked me for the packages I wanted, 
etc.

It sounds complicated but it's not bad once you do it once.

Alan
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change  you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss