Best way to install on old laptop without CD-rom with USB?

[displacedtexan]

I will soon have a pentium II 300 MHZ laptop with 64 mb of RAM and only a floppy drive and USB port. I won't have an ethernet adapter. What's the easiest way to install puppy to the hard drive?

Some ideas:

Remove laptop hard drive, connect to desktop, install from cd-rom, re-install into laptop. Will this work? I know it doesn't in Windows, but am hoping it does in Linux.

Somehow boot from floppy and then mount USB memory stick (or USB cd-rom or USB hard drive) and install from there. Anybody know of a good how to?

Thanks for helping a newbie out!!

If I am successful, I'll write a mini How-to and post it somewhere...

[Sit Heel Speak]

I will soon have a pentium II 300 MHZ laptop with 64 mb of RAM and only a floppy drive and USB port. I won't have an ethernet adapter. What's the easiest way to install puppy to the hard drive?

First of all: I have a longstanding animus against Texas, so some acidity is unavoidable.

I am however perhaps the biggest fan of Puppy on a usb stick, so you will just have to bear it.

Some Puppies will run natively in 64MB, many won't --or if they will, it's only with a swap partition on a hard disk. See the thread:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17557

John Murga's MeanPuppy is a safe choice.

Some ideas:

Remove laptop hard drive, connect to desktop, install from cd-rom, re-install into laptop. Will this work? I know it doesn't in Windows, but am hoping it does in Linux.

Yes, but...if you install a bootloader such as grub, then you may have to go in and manually edit its config file menu.lst (probably in c:\boot\grub or /mnt/hda1/boot/grub) to change references to hd1 to hd0 and hdb to hda...if, when on the other machine, while grub is installing, the drive is the slave, e.g. hd1 and hdb, but in the laptop is the master hd0 and hda.

Somehow boot from floppy and then mount USB memory stick (or USB cd-rom or USB hard drive) and install from there. Anybody know of a good how to?

The originator of the whole put-an-option-1-install-of-Puppy-on-a-USB-stick-and-then-boot-it-using-a-floppy idea is pakt, who is not from Texas, in the threads at

(for usb1)
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=3875

(for usb2)
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=7979

There is a how-to in a sticky thread at the top of one of the forum sections on booting from usb, and if you won't take the time to find it yourself then you are even worse than Texan, you are beneath me socially.

On the other hand, if you take all the information given therein as the gospel truth...considering all the revisions Puppy has gone through...then you are likewise beneath me socially. So, my best advice is, go find and read it, choose a low-RAM version of Puppy, and take your best Jim Bowie at it, making note of every step you take, and then report back here everything you've done if you get stuck, and also the contents (on the stick) of linld.cfg ....

The way I usually create a usb stick of Puppy is to unpack the .iso under Windows using ISOBuster directly onto the stick, and then rename INITRD.GZ and VMLINUZ to uppercase (for some mysterious reason, lowercase doesn't work for me, though for others it does) and then boot using pakt's boot floppy. Others make the usb stick bootable but your old laptop probably doesn't support it, however since you are Texan you probably will search on "make bootable syslinux" and my nick and so you will find a recent post where a newbie just like you but from a decent state did that very thing without a hitch the first time.

When you format the about-to-become-boot-floppy diskette, do so in Windows. Look at the status report when it finishes. If it has even 1 bad byte in a bad sector, then crumple it up and throw it away and keep trying diskettes until you get a good one.

Welcome to the kennels. You'll get more sympathy from Ted Dog and Nathan F, they are fellow ten-gallon-hatters.

SHS (who wishes Santa Anna had kicked Sam Houston's derriere back to Michigan...)

PS Don't get a puny little Texas-size 512MB stick, get an Alaska-size 2 gigabyter.

[bostonvaulter]

SHS,

I think you should try and be a bit more welcoming, even if you don't like Texans for whatever reason, you need to remember that they are not all the same.

I would also suggest installing to a usb stick on another computer and then booting from usb if your comp supports it, but it probably doesn't so you should try wakepup2 like SHS suggested.

Welcome to the Kennels! I hope you have a good time with Puppy.

Jason

[mouldy]

Remove laptop hard drive, connect to desktop, install from cd-rom, re-install into laptop. Will this work? I know it doesn't in Windows, but am hoping it does in Linux.

This is way I do it. Yes it works, and yes if you use grub, you probably will have to edit the grub menu.lst file (go to top level with ROX and click the BOOT directory, then click the GRUB directory, then click the menu.lst file and it will open in genie or whatever editing program you have as default. I always edit grub while still running from live cd to make sure settings will allow it to then boot. Even on modern machine I want Grub to boot puppy automatically after 3 seconds without me pressing enter and have to uncomment and modify a line in menu file to accomplish this.

I even got Puppy to boot and run half way decent on an old 300mhz laptop with 32mb ram. Opera browser by way works much better than Seamonkey or Firefox on low ram machines. Big hint, dont push Puppy too hard on such a machine, like leaving zillion tabs open when browsing, etc. Yes I did a type 2 install and created a swap partition. From my experience this generally works best when using Puppy on old low ram machines.

[Sit Heel Speak]

@displacedtexan: just be glad you're out. Your governor and your state highway commission are trying to vaccinate and toll-road you to death.

Opera browser by way works much better than Seamonkey or Firefox

Which is why I say, MeanPuppy is a safe choice. It uses Opera as the browser and is very compact.

If you choose MeanPuppy (a variant of Puppy 2.02) and load it on a USB stick and use WakePup2 to boot it on a 64MB notebook, I suspect you will at first fail. For me, WakePup2 works through usb2 ports, but does not work through a usb1 port, which is almost certainly what you have.

If you too fail with WakePup2, then instead try the earlier WakePup 1.1C and modify its linld.com line to read (this assumes you are using a Puppy 2 version):

Code: Select all

LINLD.COM image=%pupdrv%\VMLINUZ initrd=%pupdrv%\INITRD.GZ cl=@%pupdrv%\linld.cfg

not

Code: Select all

LINLD.COM image=%pupdrv%\vmlinuz initrd=%pupdrv%\image.gz cl=@%cfg%

which is what you would use for a Puppy 1 version.

If it still doesn't work, tell us what the screen says when it fails. PSLEEP=25 is a good idea if using a usb1 port and so is acpi=off the first time you boot, though for the sake of battery life you will want to later try acpi=on. Two other parameters you may wish to add to the stick's linld.cfg file line are "irqpoll" (without the quotes) and "nopcmcia" .

For me it does not matter whether I'm using a Puppy 1-series or a Puppy 2-series version. What matters is which type of usb port I am plugging the stick into. If I boot through a usb2 port, it's WakePup2. If through a usb port, WakePup 1.1c.

HTH,
SHS

[Sit Heel Speak]

Also, if there is nothing on the disk you wish to save, I strongly recommend that you begin by using GPartEd to divide it into two partitions: a Type 82 Linux swap partition of 128MB, and the rest either vfat or fat16 (for an Option 1 install to disk, or if you are going to run from a usb stick) or ext3 (if you choose an Option 2 install). I, personally, prefer the Option 1 install on a vfat partition, because having your support files on a vfat partition makes things easier to tinker with if you move the disk to a Windows machine. Others prefer ext3 and Option 2, it is claimed that Puppy will run faster this way.

[displacedtexan]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will not receive the laptop until Tuesday (great deal on a toughbook with touchscreen on ebay), so I'll have to wait a few more days until I get the chance to implement your suggestions.

Oh, and I went ahead and bought an additional 128MB of RAM to help puppy... I would have bought 256, but I have seen conflicting reports of this laptop accepting a 256MB chip...

I am sure after awhile in this community, I'll figure out what SHS has against the homeland (Texas)...

Thanks again!!

[Sit Heel Speak]

It has to do with an incident in a bar in Vail, Colorado, involving the cornflower-eyed beauty from Austin I had just bought a 7-and-7 for, and a sawed-off prick from Houston who considered her to be his private property.

If you have 128MB of RAM or more, then boost the swap partition up to 256MB.

I'm curious about your machine: if I understand correctly, it comes equipped with only 64MB, but carries a touchpad. Is this a new machine, or used?

With regard to the touchpad: if you end up wishing that a similar thing would happen to it as I wish on Texas, then you may find a side-conversation which developed between self and Swiss Puppy-user Béèm, in the thread

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=17451

to be of interest. Further links I point to, there, will lead you to procedures for not entirely disabling it but rather modifying its objectionable personality.

Texas. Please. Someone arrange a replay of Chicxulub only closer to the Gulf coast.