Trying to install Puppy using PCMCIA

[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.

[pupgrinder]

otropogo wrote:

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

I found what I used to install XP on the laptop in question. It is a Microsoft package that creates 6 disks to boot up to the point of inserting the Windows XP install CD. Loads exactly the same stuff as if you had booted from the CD.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994

Okay, so right before reading your latest suggestion, a light bulb went off in my head to do exactly what you mentioned -- install Windows 98 SE on the space I have available (which is now up to about 3GB after I cleared out the hotfix and service pack rollback files, etc.), then get rid of my NTFS partition and work with Puppy from there.

While going through all this I put a bid on the identical laptop that includes the docking station with a built-in optical drive. It might be a little silly, but that's the configuration I've read about so many people having great success with many Linux distros. So, I can use the docking station to boot onto the CD, install Puppy, and then do it on the other laptop. Two Puppy-running laptops for a low eBay price.