theaceoffire
July 11th, 2008, 04:38 AM
Explination.
So we have some old (OLD) computers that we were going to get rid of, and I decided to see if I could manage to scrap something useful out of them.
They are Hatachi's, with a 450MHz processor, 128MB of ram, a floppy drive, cd drive, and 2 usb slots. Fat 16 file system, and running Windows 2000.
So I grab a copy of xubuntu and try to get em goin. Set the bios to boot floppy, cd, hard disk, and stick in the disk... nothing.
Reburn the image, try again: nothing.
Make a boot disk, choose CD, it works! (oops, forgot to alternative instal... it crashes).
Try again, it tells me that it is getting an error (0x44 i believe, no cd inserted). This continues 99% of the time, randomly deciding to let me boot from a disk.
So I say to myself, "Self! I refuse to continue messing with this cd drive. Maybe there are other options". And indeed there were.
This is the story of me, one computer, and pain.
The Battle Begins.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~
Attempt 1). Insert disk. Can't read disk. Burn new disk, run disk check... no errors. Won't boot.
Attempt 2). Used rawwritewin.exe (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite-old.htm) to burn a copy of sbm.bin (http://www.filewatcher.com/m/sbm.bin.1474560.0.0.html) that I got from an Ubuntu install cd to a floppy. Its easy to use, just click the start, select the image (Had to choose "view all" since it is not an img file), and run.
This worked by the way, it let me boot from the cd... but then my cd issues started up. It was not registering any cd being entered at all (God it is old hardware). So I moved on.
Attempt 3). Found an *awesome* program called unetbootin (http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html). Everything was going great, got all base files installed... when it hanged while installing software. (Again, I blame old computer.. can't believe it still runs). It worked great though... I am keeping a copy of this for the future. This program lets you install an OS to a hard disk or thumb drive, either from an ISO, a cd, or from a list that it will go online and download what you need. Then you reboot and select the second option, which does what you ask. Keep an eye on this.
Attempt 4). Started looking for more floppy images. Lots more. Some I found were superGrubDisk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=6), which didn't have usb support (sigh). Anywho, I probably didn't know enough to use it right (too complicated?)
Attempt 5). Tried to do a net install. Got the idea from Ubuntu's installation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation) guides, the one about netbooting floppies (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/WithFloppies).
Basically I used the same program as before (rawwritewin.exe (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite-old.htm)) to create 3 floppies: boot.img, root.img, net-drivers.img. (http://ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current//images/floppy/)
The idea is you boot from boot.img, then add the next two which enable your network, and then download your OS from online! However, it failed. The boot disk gave me an error (Something like "Booting linux: failed) so I had to move on. On a side note, that same image worked on a virtual computer at home later that day, go figure.
Attempt 6). I grabbed an external hard drive, mounted Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/get#hardy) in deamon lite (http://http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php?catid=5&mode=ViewCategory), and copied all visible and hidden files to the root of the external hard drive. Moved to the computer, plugged it in, and tried to run superGrubDisk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=6) to boot into it... but couldn't figure out how to access the usb hard drive.
At this point, it was pretty clear I needed a floppy boot disk with usb drivers on it.
Attempt 7). Lucky (I hope, haven't done this yet). Found someone online who suggested using the pendrivelinux floppy image (http://pendrivelinux.com/downloads/pdlfloppy.img.gz). This lets you boot to a usb with the pendrive os on it, and it uses grub, so I figure I can modify its target to activate the "cd"'s I have stored on my 4GB, partitioned thumb drive (Got XP essentail and Xbuntu Alternate install on it).
To Be Continued...
I will update as I keep trying... and I would love to have someone else swoop in with a bootable floppy that allows booting USB devices....
So we have some old (OLD) computers that we were going to get rid of, and I decided to see if I could manage to scrap something useful out of them.
They are Hatachi's, with a 450MHz processor, 128MB of ram, a floppy drive, cd drive, and 2 usb slots. Fat 16 file system, and running Windows 2000.
So I grab a copy of xubuntu and try to get em goin. Set the bios to boot floppy, cd, hard disk, and stick in the disk... nothing.
Reburn the image, try again: nothing.
Make a boot disk, choose CD, it works! (oops, forgot to alternative instal... it crashes).
Try again, it tells me that it is getting an error (0x44 i believe, no cd inserted). This continues 99% of the time, randomly deciding to let me boot from a disk.
So I say to myself, "Self! I refuse to continue messing with this cd drive. Maybe there are other options". And indeed there were.
This is the story of me, one computer, and pain.
The Battle Begins.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~
Attempt 1). Insert disk. Can't read disk. Burn new disk, run disk check... no errors. Won't boot.
Attempt 2). Used rawwritewin.exe (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite-old.htm) to burn a copy of sbm.bin (http://www.filewatcher.com/m/sbm.bin.1474560.0.0.html) that I got from an Ubuntu install cd to a floppy. Its easy to use, just click the start, select the image (Had to choose "view all" since it is not an img file), and run.
This worked by the way, it let me boot from the cd... but then my cd issues started up. It was not registering any cd being entered at all (God it is old hardware). So I moved on.
Attempt 3). Found an *awesome* program called unetbootin (http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html). Everything was going great, got all base files installed... when it hanged while installing software. (Again, I blame old computer.. can't believe it still runs). It worked great though... I am keeping a copy of this for the future. This program lets you install an OS to a hard disk or thumb drive, either from an ISO, a cd, or from a list that it will go online and download what you need. Then you reboot and select the second option, which does what you ask. Keep an eye on this.
Attempt 4). Started looking for more floppy images. Lots more. Some I found were superGrubDisk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=6), which didn't have usb support (sigh). Anywho, I probably didn't know enough to use it right (too complicated?)
Attempt 5). Tried to do a net install. Got the idea from Ubuntu's installation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation) guides, the one about netbooting floppies (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/WithFloppies).
Basically I used the same program as before (rawwritewin.exe (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite-old.htm)) to create 3 floppies: boot.img, root.img, net-drivers.img. (http://ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian/dists/sarge/main/installer-i386/current//images/floppy/)
The idea is you boot from boot.img, then add the next two which enable your network, and then download your OS from online! However, it failed. The boot disk gave me an error (Something like "Booting linux: failed) so I had to move on. On a side note, that same image worked on a virtual computer at home later that day, go figure.
Attempt 6). I grabbed an external hard drive, mounted Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/get#hardy) in deamon lite (http://http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php?catid=5&mode=ViewCategory), and copied all visible and hidden files to the root of the external hard drive. Moved to the computer, plugged it in, and tried to run superGrubDisk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=6) to boot into it... but couldn't figure out how to access the usb hard drive.
At this point, it was pretty clear I needed a floppy boot disk with usb drivers on it.
Attempt 7). Lucky (I hope, haven't done this yet). Found someone online who suggested using the pendrivelinux floppy image (http://pendrivelinux.com/downloads/pdlfloppy.img.gz). This lets you boot to a usb with the pendrive os on it, and it uses grub, so I figure I can modify its target to activate the "cd"'s I have stored on my 4GB, partitioned thumb drive (Got XP essentail and Xbuntu Alternate install on it).
To Be Continued...
I will update as I keep trying... and I would love to have someone else swoop in with a bootable floppy that allows booting USB devices....