Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 15:29:33 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: junkmale@xtra.co.nz, "wwoods@cybcon.com" <wwoods@cybcon.com>, Steve Friedrich <SteveFriedrich@Hot-Shot.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Unique question...... Message-ID: <19980902152933.B606@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <199809012102.JAA01223@cyclops.xtra.co.nz>; from Dan Langille on Wed, Sep 02, 1998 at 09:02:24AM %2B1200 References: <199809011951.PAA10517@laker.net> <199809012102.JAA01223@cyclops.xtra.co.nz>
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On Wednesday, 2 September 1998 at 9:02:24 +1200, Dan Langille wrote:
> On 1 Sep 98, at 15:51, Steve Friedrich wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 01 Sep 1998 11:57:00 -0700 (PDT), William Woods wrote:
>>
>>> What I want to do is this, blow away win95 and install freebsd. There is
>>> no way to make a boot floppy for it (it has no floppy drive) so, I am at
>>> a loss how to do this.....any ideas appreciated.
>
> [a few bits snipped]
>
>> acquire
>> the CDROM distribution (and preferably the book The Complete FreeBSD from
>> Walnut Creek (www.cdrom.com).
>
> As a newbie who bought the above book after he installed, I highly
> recommend buying the book BEFORE installing. It would have saved me a
> great deal of time and frustration.
Well, I'll agree it's an excellent book :-)
But in this case it won't help you too much.
I can see a few alternatives, in the order of diminishing
ease of use (but in no particular cost order):
1. Get a CD-ROM for the machine, and install from CD-ROM. This
appears to be what you're planning. Before you make the
investment, make sure you can boot from CD-ROM. Note that if your
machine supports either floppy or CD-ROM at one time, you can't
boot from floppy and then swap in the CD-ROM: by that time the
kernel will have decided you don't have a CD-ROM, and will refuse
to examine any evidence to the contrary.
2. Get a floppy drive for the machine, and use it to boot the
machine. Install via the net using Ethernet.
3. Put the hard disk in another full-blown laptop and do the
installation in that machine, then move it to your system.
4. Put the hard disk in a desktop and do the installation in that
machine, then move it to your system. You'll need an adaptor
cable, which isn't always cheap.
5. Get a floppy drive for the machine, and use it to boot the
machine. Install via the net using PLIP and a laplink cable.
6. Get a floppy drive for the machine, and use it to boot the
machine. Install via the net using a PPP connection.
7. Get a floppy drive for the machine, and use it to boot the
machine and install the software.
A number of laptops have important setup and diagnostic utilities on
the disk (as I discovered after I bought a brand new laptop and blew
away the disk, just as you're planning to do :-). You might consider
shrinking the W95% partition to the bare minimum to keep these
programs.
Greg
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