(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

have an old ibm t20 with an 11 gig hd. it was running windoz 2000 but I wanted to install lucid on it instead. I reformatted the hd to ext 2 and when I boot the cd, the hd is not recognized so I can't make the install.
help appreciated

When you say "not recognised" - does gparted see it? Maybe you could reformat it (I like ext4).
Let us know more details of what happens.

windows2000 was it's own trouble,as it put things in wierd places, you may need to re mbr the drive from a floppy to get it useable first.

Do you have a dos (any version except 4) Disc1 floppy by any chance around? If not freedos will do it, it's fdboot.img for the boot disk and fdbasecd.iso for the cd part if needed. Info and Help is on the webpage.
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/freedos ... tions/1.0/

start it on that,
break out of the dos install program with a <ctrl>c to a prompt,
type fdisk /mbr,
that should reset the mbr to standard

?It's not a compaq by any chance is it, as they need their own version of dos.

it doesn't seem to matter what filing sys that gparted live formats on the hard drive since puppy lucid still doesn't find the device. using its native gparted, no device beyond the floppy and the cd are seen.
I assume like scsijon says, that the prob is in windoz 2000 mbr but am having difficulty understanding clearly his recommendations, though I will try to gin up an old floppy with dos and see if I can wipe the mbr sufficiently. and scsijon, this is an old ibm t20 fyi.
if anyone else can chime in with something effective, I'd greatly appreciate.
thanks again to all for input.

You might lack the driver for the HDD .
If it needs SCSI drivers then you should look for a Puppy derivate especially for these .

You might also consider an IDE kernel not a SATA kernel as by default in Puppy Linux kernel >= 2.6.30.5 .

Just tried the latest Wary on my T20. Same thing, no hard drive,none of the tools running live see it.

Type 'diskprobe' in console for list.

__________________________

Tusk wrote:Just tried the latest Wary on my T20. Same thing, no hard drive,none of the tools running live see it.

I always do a quick erase with Dban (Dariks Boot n Nuke) on
older drives to make them usable (visible).

Go in with gparted (if you can make IT recognize the drive) and create a new partition table, type "msdos" (default type). Some windows versions back in the day liked to make trouble by being inventive with those things.

Then create a new ext3 partition (ext2 can corrupt upon power failure or other unexpected shutdown).

BTW, if you hear a clicking noise when the drive is accessing (or trying to be accessed) that means mechanical failure of the drive is imminent and you need a new hard drive.

Re: "hard drive not recognized" issue in PIII Thinkpads:

While you are struggling with partitioning and formating
your disk drive in your IBM T20 Thinkpad laptop,
perhaps this might be pertinent:

I ran into a related problem trying to swap my IBM T22 Thinkpad's hard
drive into my Dell D600 laptop.

I believe I found that the BIOS of IBM Thinkpads of the T20 T21 T22
era claimed the hard drive's number of heads geometry
was 240 rather than 255 (which the Dell BIOS detected from
the hard drive's hardware itself.)

I can't find the better web page describing this issue anymore
but here is some T20 information:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... +partition

The Lighthouse utility does not pick up the drive. Boot and nuked with UBCD, partitioned with PartedMagic (UBCD) not forgetting to set the boot flag, still no joy. Suspect driver problem but I don’t know for sure , any ideas how I can verify this please? Wary looks great running live, just wish I could install it.

looks like the BIOS only recognizes Win formats ?

You could try to boot with "debug" kernel parameter .

Also look into /tmp/boot* files for hints .

Maybe the HW is somewhat jerky on its last legs and you just have bad luck these days ..

# probepart
# probedisk
# disktype

are few commands that might give some output .

Check /dev directory for /dev/sda* files existence .

Probably kernel 2.6.25 would be better ( IDE kernel )