Trying to install Puppy using PCMCIA

[pupgrinder]

Hello, all. I've combed the forums and Google and can't find any solution to my exact problem.

I'm trying to install Puppy Linux on a Pentium II 366Mhz laptop with 192 MB of RAM and a 6GB HDD. I thought it sounded like the perfect candidate to install Puppy.

Problem is, the PCMCIA CD-ROM drive on this laptop is not bootable directly on startup. No BIOS setting is available to remedy this. A driver has to be loaded for it to work. I cannot seem to create the right combination of boot floppy and CD-ROM to install from a PCMCIA.

When installing Windows XP (which runs well if slowly once it finally boots and all the AV/Firewall/etc. software loads at startup), I created a boot disk that detected the CD-ROM drive fine and I was off and installing easily.

I first tried to do the Xubuntu install from Windows, but it required more RAM than what I have, and also I think Xubuntu would have been a bit too much for it.

None of the distros I've tried (even Slackware) had a boot disk that could drive this PCMCIA cd-rom (but Slackware's came the closest -- it at least made it spin -- but I don't want Slackware).

Although I'm not a complete noob to Linux (I just finished installing DSL on an old IBM 365XD laptop), if the only solution starts with "just compile the..." then I'm probably going to just leave XP on this laptop.

Puppy sounds perfect for it, but I'm just *this* far away from being able to install it.

Thanks in advance.

Added: Toshiba Portege 7020CT
I found this: "The PCMCIA is a Toshiba auto-switching 16-bit/Cardbus work-alike of the Intel PCIC. It works fine with the standard pcmcia Cardbus manager drivers." But this guy actually installed Linux (several distros) using the docking station, which adds an optical drive.

[Béèm]

Is the module yenta_socket loaded?

[pupgrinder]

Is the module yenta_socket loaded?

I do not think it is. I am using a floppy made to boot to the live Puppy CD, but I can't tell you right now exactly where I got the image or what it is called. I'm not at the computer where I downloaded that.

It basically has a Grub bootloader that brings up a menu of where I'd like to boot from. I choose Live CD, but it does not work. It's more for systems that have internal CD-ROM's but no option to boot from them.

Where can I get yenta_socket and how can I get it to load when I boot off a floppy? Beyond that, how can I start the install on the Puppy CD after I've booted?

UPDATE: I used grubflop, from http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 166285847d on these forums.

[Béèm]

I think I misunderstood your post.
You haven't a running system yet due to the lack of support for the CD-ROM.
So my remark to load the yenta module is silly.
I don't have any experience with the referenced thread.

But maybe you could do the install from within Windows following the Lin'N'Win method.

[John Doe]

Hello pupgrinder, please try this thread:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=32458

Work is currently ongoing to get your system type working. You might want to take up any feedback there.

[pupgrinder]

Thanks to both of you for your responses. I did view the contents of the Puppy Live CD while in Windows on the laptop, but didn't see any autorun.inf like I do on Xubuntu. I will try the Lin'Win method link.

I also will follow that thread. Thanks so much.

[otropogo]

Hello pupgrinder, please try this thread:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=32458

Work is currently ongoing to get your system type working. You might want to take up any feedback there.

Actually, we've been mostly concentrating on trying to boot from the parallel port in the past few weeks, and seem to have run out of steam at that.

I'd say this thread is reasonably well named, and more narrowly focused, although I'd drop the "cdrom" part, as I suggested to the OP, because the problem is really with PCMCIA support at bootup.

It does impact Wakepup development, of course, but being more narrowly focused can sometimes help in finding solutions.

[arby]

pupgrinder,

Does your machine have a USB port?

[otropogo]

Hello, all. I've combed the forums and Google and can't find any solution to my exact problem.

Welcome to the club. PCMCIA boot support has definitely existed previously in Linux, as has parallel port support. Unfortunately the knowledge of how this was done has been mislaid.

A large part of the reason is that the main distros have lost all interest in such pedestrian means of booting, or even installing, as the boot floppy. Even Knoppix, which was long touted as very undemanding of resources, stopped providing a boot image around 2004.

Unfortunately, the driving forces in Linux are all about forging ahead, not about keeping old tools in good working order.

And PCMCIA complicates the matter further.

I know that the necessary code was avaible not so long ago, because I managed to install Suse 9.2 from a pcmcia_scsi CDROM using a set of Suse floppy boot disks, one of which provided the necessary pcmcia support. But the next version of Suse dropped boot floppies altogether!

There have been pcmcia boot disks offered before then and since (DSL had one). But none I've tried have ever worked. It's particularly frustrating now, when you can buy a hugely faster 2GB Compact Flash card (I bought a 2GB 100x CF from Radio Shack for $25 recently), and use it as a removable disk in a $20 Sandisk PCMCIA CF adapter.

I'm trying to install Puppy Linux on a Pentium II 366Mhz laptop with 192 MB of RAM and a 6GB HDD. I thought it sounded like the perfect candidate to install Puppy

.

Well, it is. I'm not experienced enough to give you exact directions, but if you have DOS or windows support for your pcmcia slots, you can simply use a desktop system to copy the necessary Puppy files from the LiveCD to a flash card, insert it in the pcmcia slot in an appropriate adapter, and copy it from there to an existing Vfat partition (including your XP partition, if it's vfat) to create a frugal install.

In fact, Crash, who's been trying to rewrite Wakepup to make it work as advertised, talked me through doing the reverse recently. I installed reinstalled Windows98 in exactly that way, except that I used Puppy to read the CF card, and used the Windows setup.exe to do the install.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=32787

With a Puppy frugal install, it's much easier. You just copy a few files to the hard drive, and you don't need a product key.

I've got an even less powerful laptop, a P166MMX with only 160MB of RAM, and am running Puppy 3.01Retro. That particular version because it's the only one for which there's a module to support my pcmcia_scsi host adapter.

I gather your pcmcia CDROM adapter isn't SCSI? If it is it would probably use the same aha152x_cs module mine requires. But it may only work under the 2.6.18 kernel used by Puppy 3.01 Retro.

Problem is, the PCMCIA CD-ROM drive on this laptop is not bootable directly on startup. No BIOS setting is available to remedy this. A driver has to be loaded for it to work. I cannot seem to create the right combination of boot floppy and CD-ROM to install from a PCMCIA.

I doubt there's ever been a BIOS that supported booting from pcmcia. The most you could hope for is a boot floppy (or a hard drive based boot loader) that would boot the system and hand over to the media attached to the pcmcia port.

When installing Windows XP (which runs well if slowly once it finally boots and all the AV/Firewall/etc. software loads at startup), I created a boot disk that detected the CD-ROM drive fine and I was off and installing easily.

That sounds very promising. The Freedos part of the Wakepup2 floppy can see and recognize the scsi controller on my pcmcia connecter, read the scsi ID setting on the attached CDROM drive, and even read the name of the Puppy sfs file. But when it hands over to Linux amnesia strikes, and Wakepup can't find the files.

How about posting your boot disk here for download? I'd like to see if it would work to install Win2K.

Puppy sounds perfect for it, but I'm just *this* far away from being able to install it.

If you've got XP on your laptop, you're practically there.

I've been thinking about my other post suggesting you come over to the Wakepup2 thread, and really it makes more sense to continue this discussion here. Because we're actually pursuing several boot options over there, and have mostly been concentrating on the parallel port lately.

Since you're the originator of this thread, you can edit the title and subtitle. I would suggest changing it just slightly to:

Trying to install Puppy using PCMCIA

Because, frankly, it's not the missing driver for your pcmcia drive adapter that's the basic problem. I have the same problem, despite the fact that I have a perfectly good driver for my host adapter. It runs the scsi chain just fine AFTER Puppy is loaded. But I can't boot a LiveCD in the drive using a boot floppy.

If we find a solution to supporting pcmcia in the boot floppy, then we'll have two solutions - boot from pcmcia CDROM or boot from pcmcia flash card.

Meanwhile, I'll try to entice Crash to come over and have a look.

[pupgrinder]

But maybe you could do the install from within Windows following the Lin'N'Win method.

I did exactly that, and it's nice to see Puppy Linux 4.00 running on my laptop. Quite snappy compared to XP's performance on same. Dual-boot was not my goal, however, so I'm not finished yet (I hope).

One thing that I did not get working and it's too late to spend time on it at the moment? PCMCIA from within Puppy. Gpccard PCMCIA monitor did not start when I clicked it, and I don't know what else to try to detect/setup my wireless D-link PCMCIA card or my wired PCMCIA Lan adapter (dongle, anyone?). I tried both.

Would that we all could have new laptops with built-in optical drives and network interfaces. 'Course, then I probably wouldn't be installing Puppy. But I digress.

Right now, I'm dual-booting XP and Puppy from the hard drive. The next step is nuking XP and actually doing a full-blown install of Puppy instead of booting from those two files I copied from the Live CD. One major impetus for this is that I have only 649 MB left for Puppy right now, on this 6GB HDD.

How can I do that? I'm hesitant to run any partitioning utilities in Puppy for fear of going back to square one and being completely dead in the water without any OS to fall back on.

arby - It does have one USB port. It is 1.1 and my BIOS has no option to boot from it, but if something using USB will work for me, then I will spend the time.

Otropogo, your reply was so thorough and spot-on that I can't begin to quote all the relevant passages. Thank you very much. I renamed my reply but don't know how to rename the entire thread.

As far as the XP boot floppies go? That would take a while for me to find. Maybe once the busy weekend is over.

The funny thing about all this is that today while working from home and struggling to get Puppy on my Toshiba laptop, I successfully installed DSL on a very old IBM 365XD with a 900MB HDD and 40MB RAM and it runs like a champ, and I got on the internet with it.

Because it has a built-in CD-ROM and a very good PCMCIA utility (for the network adapter).

Now, if I can just figure out how to make DSL use that swap partition I created. Oops, sorry. Almost highjacked my own thread.

[Béèm]

pupgrinder,
Congratulations.
I understand your idea of blowing windows from your machine in favor of a full install.
Bear in mind then, that you don't have the boot possibility of the Lin'N'Win approach anymore as it uses (well a very small part) Windows.

Not having Windows, you're back at square one.

[pupgrinder]

If all I need is the boot loader from my Windows partition, then can't I use Gparted or some other utility to resize the Windows partition to something miniscule and then make another partition and format it ext2 (or should I use ext3)? Also, I've heard some folks say that these days you don't need a bunch of separate partitions for Linux (swap, root, etc.). Is that true?

I'm excited about giving new life to this laptop. I had become a little jealous of my wife, who has her own, newer model that she bought used from a friend for an absolute song. Today she said, "My laptop's running a little slow." She didn't like my suggestion of installing Linux on it. Oh well.

[Bruce B]

If all I need is the boot loader from my Windows partition, then can't I use Gparted or some other utility to resize the Windows partition to something miniscule and then make another partition and format it ext2 (or should I use ext3)? Also, I've heard some folks say that these days you don't need a bunch of separate partitions for Linux (swap, root, etc.). Is that true?

I could say you don't need Windows or Microsoft partitions. I use
only Linux partitions.

I could also say it's a Microsoft world. There are some Linux
distros, Puppy being one of them, that accommodates the Microsoft
Windows user, by having ways of installing Linux on the Microsoft
partition.

I long while back I uploaded oldbios for the purpose of booting
CD-ROM Drives when there is no BIOS support. I haven't had a
complaint with it not working. Try it and see if it works. That's my
main reason for making this post.

[otropogo]

...can't I use Gparted or some other utility to resize the Windows partition to something miniscule

Resizing with Geparted under Puppy 3.01R was how I hosed my Windows installation permanently. I tried on and off for months to get it to boot again, but none of the old standbys would work. Even Ranish Partition Manager couldn't figure out how to fix it.

If you're going to resize a Windows partition, I suggest using Zeleps Presizer instead.

and then make another partition and format it ext2 (or should I use ext3)? Also, I've heard some folks say that these days you don't need a bunch of separate partitions for Linux (swap, root, etc.). Is that true?

You certainly don't' with a Puppy frugal install. All you really need is a Linux swap partition. The Puppy files can coexist with Windows in a vfat partition. why not try that first, and see how it goes? I wish I had.

My problems stemmed from trying to do a hard drive install, and having to rearrange and resize my existing Windows partitions.

[otropogo]

...
Gpccard PCMCIA monitor did not start when I clicked it,

Aha, so I'm not the only person who's had this experience!

I've tried to use GPCcard PCMCIA monitor in a couple of laptops and with several Puppy versions now, and it always behaved exactly as you describe-it does nothing, just aborts without any error message.

I have no idea what it's supposed to do, or why it still occupies space in the menus.

Time for another BUG report...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 350#228350

I renamed my reply but don't know how to rename the entire thread.

You go to your INITIAL post of the thread, click on the edit tab, simply edit the "subject" line, preview, and submit. Then the revised subject line will represent the thread in the thread indices. All the threads marked <solved> have had their subject lines edited this way by the OPs.

As far as the XP boot floppies go? That would take a while for me to find. Maybe once the busy weekend is over.

No rush at all! This is a problem I've been chewing on for years. But I do hope you'll follow through when you have time.

[pupgrinder]

Somehow I think my original intent got lost. I don't want Windows on this laptop anymore at all.

I think I didn't explain clearly how I finally booted into Puppy. Because the solution was in link to a document not hosted here, some folks don't know what I did. I did a Lin'n'Win install, wherein I copied four files from the Puppy Live CD to C:\ while in Windows. I then edited Windows XP's boot.ini and one of the files I copied from the Live CD. After that, I rebooted and booted directly from the HD.

This bypasses rather than fixes my original problem, which is no PCMCIA support when booting from the Puppy boot floppy I created. The CD-ROM on this laptop is connected via PCMCIA. See my problem?

The method I used to boot from the hard drive is cool, but it pretty much locks me into keeping at least some kind of Windows partition on my drive. Also, I'm sure Puppy boot time and possibly performance suffers from using this method (since it's using just those four files and somehow expanding them on-the-fly during boot and/or normal operation).

So, that's my story, again. Still no answer out there, probably, but if I have to keep it this way, I would like to at least keep only what I must to start up Puppy from the hard drive (I think they take up about 80 or 90MB or so).

thanks, again, everybody.

[Bruce B]

I think so many people are unwilling to lose Windows, you have to spell it out.

If you can boot from the CD-ROM it makes things a easier. I'm not aware of any failures of oldbios to do its job, although I can't give promises.

Any problem with trying it?

If you can run Puppy as a frugal install on the NTFS which I think you are saying you can, you can still get rid of Windows, NTFS and make a full Puppy install. It just takes a few more steps which I can outline for you.

I'd sort of appreciate it if you try oldbios as it can make things easier and add an ability to your computer it didn't have before. Search under Bruce B and oldbios.

If you don't want to, there is still a way. Let me know.

[otropogo]

Somehow I think my original intent got lost. I don't want Windows on this laptop anymore at all.

Got it.

...my original problem, which is no PCMCIA support when booting from the Puppy boot floppy I created. The CD-ROM on this laptop is connected via PCMCIA. See my problem?

Not exactly. Unless you're hankering to boot from other Linux LiveCDs.. In which case you'd better hang around here and help us get the PCMCIA boot support figured out.

I'd be happy to just have a boot floppy that would let me access my pcmcia_scsi cdrom under DOS, in case I ever lost the use of Windows and Puppy on the hard drive. That's also why I wouldn't remove Windows or Puppy at this point. If one of them dies, I can use the other to reinstall it via pcmcia.

Right now, I've got Windows98SE and a frugal Pup301 R installed on hda1. Pmount shows the partition as 1.1GB, with 520MB free. 113MB of that is the cab files I uploaded to install Windows. So they could be removed without damage, reducing the used space to some 370MB, of which 160MB are Puppy files (64MB in pup_save, which doesn't need to be there).

So the storage cost of having a minimalist W98 system is only about 200MB - a reasonable price for the added security IMO. And my laptop's drive is the same size as yours - 6GB.

One other thing I'm not quite clear on. It sounds like the pcmcia CDROM runs ok under Puppy once the OS is loaded. What's the module it uses?(Sorry if I missed this in a previous post)

The method I used to boot from the hard drive is cool, but it pretty much locks me into keeping at least some kind of Windows partition on my drive.

Yeah, but if you used a frugal install, you could use that space for your Puppy files, and use the rest of your drive for other partitions, as described below.

Also, I'm sure Puppy boot time and possibly performance suffers from using this method (since it's using just those four files and somehow expanding them on-the-fly during boot and/or normal operation).

Don't know about boot time, but that should be an insignificant factor overall. And it's the expansion and searching your drives for saves that slows down the boot. Once the OS is loaded into memory, there shouldn't be any difference in speed.

if I have to keep it this way, I would like to at least keep only what I must to start up Puppy from the hard drive (I think they take up about 80 or 90MB or so).

If you look at the link I gave previously to installing Windows without CDROM, you'll see that Crash had me booting Puppy from the hard drive with no Windows files installed except those written to the disk by the Windows startup floppy. How much space could that take? And I don't believe the startup floppy checks to make sure you've got enough space to install Windows (not the Win98 one anyway).

So for a frugal install, you could make your vfat partition just large enough to hold your essential frugal pup files, a hundred MB, or two to three times that size (a change you can make later as needed) to accommodate several different frugal versions you can boot interchangeably. And partition the rest of your drive however you like and use it for data storage, including the 2sf file(s) for the frugal install(s) or to install other Linux distros.

But I'm mostly repeating, accurately, I hope, what I've been told over the past week or two. I haven't tested this myself, and perhaps Puppy does run significantly faster from a Linux partition than from a vfat partition.

I'd be interested to read any actual test times.

[pupgrinder]

Bruce B wrote:

If you can boot from the CD-ROM it makes things a easier. I'm not aware of any failures of oldbios to do its job, although I can't give promises.

Any problem with trying it?

I have no problem with trying it, but after reading some of the threads, I don't see any that use a CD-ROM that connects via PCMCIA. It is not that my computer merely doesn't offer a boot from CD option; it's that the CD-ROM drive is external and connects using PCMCIA. The driver for that is the elusive part.

So, I don't think that oldbios will solve my PCMCIA problem. Please correct if wrong. I've tried so many things that I don't want to spend time trying if your answer will save me that time.

otropogo said:

So for a frugal install, you could make your vfat partition just large enough to hold your essential frugal pup files, a hundred MB

Aha! Now I see another potential source of confusion. My HDD is formatted NTFS, not FAT. I tried booting from my Windows 98 SE boot floppy and then using FIPS, but then realized, "Duh, my HDD is NTFS."

Problem, though. Even if I worked my way to resizing my NTFS partition, I can't reduce it down to anything smaller than the 5.61GB it currently occupies without big risk of losing my Puppy Lin'n'Win files, right?

I think my best solution might be to start all over on this laptop by installing a very base setup of something that will allow me to install Puppy to the HDD.

Could I install some very basic OS from floppy, then somehow use my 1GB USB stick to do a full Puppy install? It would be painfully slow because it's USB 1.1 and also a very slow USB stick, but maybe it would work. I'm sure there's a link to somewhere that someone has done this before. Right?

Before anyone suggests it, actually running Puppy from the USB stick would be unbearably slow. I've tried running apps from the USB stick in Windows on the laptop, and it was not acceptable performance at all.

[otropogo]

otropogo said:

So for a frugal install, you could make your vfat partition just large enough to hold your essential frugal pup files, a hundred MB

.

.. My HDD is formatted NTFS, not FAT. ...

Problem, though. Even if I worked my way to resizing my NTFS partition, I can't reduce it down to anything smaller than the 5.61GB it currently occupies without big risk of losing my Puppy Lin'n'Win files, right?

I have almost no experience with NTFS files, and none at all with Puppy Lin'n'Win. So I can't offer any reliable advice on whether you can safely shrink the partition, although I don't see any obvious reason.
.
But what about the remainder of your drive? What's on the other 600 MB of this 6.2GB drive? As I mentioned, you only need about 160 MB of vfat partition to do a frugal install. If you have more room than that, say 400MB, I'd do a minimal install of Windows 98 to it first (because Windows demands a minimum of space to install), and then add a frugal install of Puppy to that. Then delete the NTFS partition and reconfigure the remaining space however you want.

If you only have room for the frugal install, it's riskier, so you need to be sure Puppy supports your pcmcia port(s) properly. Once you're sure that you can run the CDROM or access flash memory from PCMCIA, you can dump the NTFS partition.

Could I install some very basic OS from floppy, then somehow use my 1GB USB stick to do a full Puppy install?

So far as I know, USB support started with the last (and rare) version of Win95 - "D." You'll need Win98 to support USB.

It would be painfully slow because it's USB 1.1 and also a very slow USB stick, but maybe it would work

...running Puppy from the USB stick would be unbearably slow. ...

There's no need to run Puppy from USB with the amount of RAM and disk space you have

There are only two issues: the first is "booting" Puppy from USB, which either requires you to have boot support for USB in BIOS, or a boot floppy that can do the job. There's been report of success with the latter, but YMMV.

If you could do it, the slow part would simply be loading the OS into RAM, since you have more than enough. But this only makes sense for testing purposes, if that.

And since you want to do a permanent installation to hard drive, you won't be running OR loading Puppy from USB, only copying less than 100MB of files to the hard drive one time. Even with the slowest USB stick, how long can that take?

OTOH - if you have room for a vfat partition of 200MB or so , you can use your CDROM or a flash card connected to your pcmcia slot under your existing Windows to copy the Puppy files over and run them.