HD Install :: cd-rom problems during hdinstall

here's what i've done so far:

pii 233 mhz, 32mb ram, 3 gb

1 - wiped the hard drive completely
2 - made an ms-dos boot disk, used fdisk to partition a 2gb space, then formatted that 2gb space
3 - copied the knoppix folder from the dsl cd-rom to the c: drive

here's my problem: i don't have a driver installed to recognize the cd-rom drive without using the 3.5" floppy ms-dos boot disk.

after i partitioned and formatted the hard drive, i rebooted with the dsl cd-rom, but all i got was an error message "invalid system disk--replace the disk and press any key." i think this is because there's no driver installed for the cd-rom and, as a result, the dsl cd can't communicate with the hard drive without using the ms-dos floppy to boot the computer (but by that time the computer has already been booted).

i need to use the ms-dos disk to boot the computer (and the cd-rom drive), but i'm under the impression that dsl only works upon boot up. i've copied the files to the c: drive, but that doesn't seem to do anything, even when i reboot with ms-dos diskette...are there any executable files that i can access via c: prompt?

what to do? the only options i can think of are: 1) get an installable driver for the cd-rom that runs in ms-dos (do they make these?) or 2) get a 3.5" version of dsl.

i'm _completely new_ to linux (as you can see, i can't even install it), so please give me advice of which a new user can make sense!

thanks in advance...

-jb

You are almost home.

All you need to do is to create a DSL boot floppy.

The boot floppy image file is stored on the DSL download page.

You need a program called "rawrite" for DOS (or rawrite32 for windows) and a blank floppy disk in order to create a boot floppy.

You can get rawrite32 here:

http://www.duskware.com/rawrite32/download.html

Thanks for the advice! This worked perfectly!

original here.