Ubuntu/Mandrake install 2 laptop

[sandman3838]

Hello
I hope someone can help with this?
I have an old laptop!
I also have Ubuntu 804 / Mandrake 9.2 / Mandrake 8.0 all on cd's.
Now I do have a network here at the house and I do have access to other computers so I can put together almost anything.

Back to the laptop.....
I whipped out the HD without realizing that the CD drive was not working?

Is it possible to setup floppy to read Ubuntu/Mandrake (witch ever?) image that is placed on a flash drive??

Or if you have any other suggestions????

Thanks for your time and help.

KJ

[pytheas22]

Take a look here (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick) for instructions on installing from a USB stick.

I'd definitely go with Ubuntu instead of the Mandrakes that you have...those are very outdated now.

[sandman3838]

Thank you very much for the help!
Unfortunately, it didn't work.

After reading your link and I did try UNetbootin.
It did do it's thing to the USB drive however my notebook has no BIOS option to make the USB bootable. I should have checked that fisrt.

I remember reading somewhere where one could make a bootable floppy to point to the ISO location and the install would start up. I might be thinking of Mandrake!! I can't remember. I'll keep looking.

Please if you should see anything please let me know.

Also here are some links where I found some info.

http://monkeyblog.org/ubuntu/installing/


http://https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManager

[corte123]

try this site here http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ it should get you up an running

[pytheas22]

Yeah, I should have anticipated you not being able to boot to USB on an older computer. Flashing the BIOS might fix that, but maybe not. Otherwise, it seems like it's definitely possible to install Ubuntu using only a floppy drive (and a network connection), but I'm unable to find a single concise tutorial. This page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/WithFloppies) doesn't look bad, though. If it's not too intimidating, you may want to give it a try. You can use your Hardy live CD on another machine to prepare the floppy disks (since the tutorial only provides instructions for working from Linux).

Also, another thought is that you could install by moving your laptop's hard drive to another computer, or getting access to a working CD drive to use temporarily on your old laptop--it's not hard at all to remove the hard drive and CD drive from most laptops and swap in another one. This wouldn't be as fun as trying to install from floppy, but would be a lot easier if you can get someone to loan you the equipment.

[sandman3838]

Thanks for the info.

How this turns out I don't know.
I will have to do some reading.
Hey if anyone else this issue here are some links on this:

UBUNTU INSTALLATION:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/WithFloppies

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManager

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromUSB



http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-ubuntukubuntuedubuntuxubuntu-without-cdrom-drive.html

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2008/01/22/lilo-and-grub-boot-loaders-made-simple.html


Have fun.
And thank you all for your help.