HD Install :: Need advice for HD install strategy...

I've had a dual boot HD install of DSL 0.92 for a while now and keeping old Windoze 95 on that system just seems to be a waste... so I'd like to do a full HD install of DSL instead.

Unfortunately, it'll be a little tricky because this old laptop has a single bay for floppy and CD, -but- cannot boot from CD (yes I've tried -all- the boot managers, it just -won't- boot from CD).

So what I think I need to do is boot from floppy and somehow repartition and reformat the HD and copy a base OS to HD. Then shut down the system and install the CD drive, boot from the minimal Linux OS on the HD and finish the DSL install from CD. Only thing is, I haven't a clue how to do this?

Is there a better way? I don't have a CD burner but I do have an external 56k modem I can borrow from another machine.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Flash the bios maybe if thats a possibility first & see if that will enable cd rom booting?

aveline

No, tried that before. This computer's too old to support booting from CD (Samsung Pentium 133 notebook). The floppy / cd drive bay isn't even "hot swappable", so whatever is in the bay when the system boots is what stays there.

I remember seeing someone post how to boot, repartition and format from floppy on this forum a couple months back... I just can't remember how and haven't been able to find the post...

Paul

I was about to suggest copying DSL to a partition on the laptop, you could use floppies, or maybe a modem connection (if you can find reasonable dos utils to run from a boot floppy). And then I came across this, which tells you, step by step, how to do it.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html

Have fun!

This could also help, with a little modification.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/network-install.html

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