Is there some way I can install Ubuntu on this computer?

[lesliek2]

It has no floppy disk drive. Its CD drive isn't working. It has working USB ports, but its BIOS doesn't permit booting from USB. It has no operating system on its hard disk. It does have an Ethernet port, so I can connect it to my modem. The BIOS says that it supports network booting. Is there any way I can transfer any version of Linux to it via Ethernet? (If I can, I'm pretty confident that I could then download and install on it the PLoP boot manager and use that to install Ubuntu from a live USB drive.)

[grahammechanical]

Not without running an operating system and an application of some kind on that machine. How do you intended to do this?


I'm pretty confident that I could then download and install on it the PLoP boot manager

There is no operating system on that machine. Is the hard disk partitioned and formatted? If not how will you be able to store an installation image to that disk? Do you have another computer so that you can set up some kind of local network between the two machines. Can the modem by used as a router/hub?

Can you remove the hard drive and put it in another machine and then install Ubuntu onto that machine?

Regards.

[lesliek2]

Turns out I was wrong to say that the computer wouldn't boot from USB. It wouldn't boot from a USB FLASH drive. However, it would boot from a USB FLOPPY DISK drive and, using the latter with the PLoP boot manager on a floppy, I was then able to get the flash drive with Ubuntu on it to run. However, I couldn't get Ubuntu to install and am now trying to figure out why it would run, but not install.

Thank you for replying.

[andrew198]

Why not borrow a USB DVD Drive, copy iso onto CD using a mate's PC and boot/ install in the normal way from that?

[kerry_s]

a floppy, man that things got to be pretty old.

[andrew198]

a floppy, man that things got to be pretty old.

maybe he means a 5-1/4" floppy, or even an 8" one? :)

[lisati]

maybe he means a 5-1/4" floppy, or even an 8" one? :)
I have a 3.5" floppy drive that plugs in via USB, and 15 year old machine with a 3.5" drive built in, but haven't used either regularly for a few years. I haven't seen anything (PC, network controller or anything else) with an 8" drive since the 1980s..... :(

[lesliek2]

I'm happy that I gave people a giggle!

It was an external USB floppy drive that takes 3.5" floppies and that had sat unused for many years, but it did work.

(Incidentally, I'm old enough to have used the bigger floppies that were truly floppy while I ran CP/M.)

As to my inability to install Ubuntu on the target computer, even though I could get it to run, that comment applied to 12.04.3, which I run on my own computers. Since I couldn't get it to install, I tried 14.04.1 instead and it did install, so now a friend of my granddaughter has her own computer running Ubuntu. Very pleasing.

Thanks to all who replied.

Leslie