From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jun 6 15:52: 9 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from gekko.i-clue.de (server.ms-agentur.de [62.153.134.194]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B21737B6C9 for ; Tue, 6 Jun 2000 15:52:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from so@server.i-clue.de) Received: from i-clue.de (automatix.i-clue.de [192.168.0.112]) by gekko.i-clue.de (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) with ESMTP id CAA19061; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 02:54:43 +0200 Message-ID: <393D809B.87393E91@i-clue.de> Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 00:52:12 +0200 From: Christoph Sold Organization: i-clue interactive GmbH X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Veaceslav Revutchi Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: how get FreeBSD on a notebook without a FDD and CDROM? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Veaceslav Revutchi wrote: > Greetings, > > Here is the situation: I got a notebook, broken floppy drive and > no cdrom. HDD is 1.3GB with one big FAT partition with windows 95 on it. > > Now I need to still keep the 95 thing on it but make some room for 4.0 > and install it. How do I do that? > I could get a ether card in it and copy the FreeBSD distr. in a folder. > But to actualy install it I need to somehow boot freebsd on it. > > Is there a way to launch the FreeBSD installer from withing DOS or > a similar way? > > any suggestions greatly appreciated. Since nobody answered, it is not easily possible. No CD drive, no Floppy drive, only an Ethernet PC-Card Nic is probably a no-go: Problem 1: partition your harddisk without a boot floppy. Can be solved eventually using partitioning custom partitioning software. Problem 2: a DOS boot loader existed until Win95 invalidated the mechanism it used. Thus, booting off DOS or Win95 is a no-go. I would 1) put your hard disk in another box; 2) backup everything; 3) repartition the disk, leaving room for both Win and FBSD, 4) install both OSes and last, but not least, retransplant the disk into your notebook. HTH -Christoph Sold To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message