Hi,

I have a laptop with a pentium 233 and 80M RAM. Neither of floppy or hard disk work. So the cdrom is my only bootable scenario.

I want to turn this machine into a car stereo that can play mp3 and music cds.
Anybody got a good solution on which distribution to choose.

I will develop software around it but all i need is that it boots up and have access to cdrom. that's all.

thanks

indy

So you only have the cdrom, no way to put a distro on hard disk? That's gonna be a tough one. Basically you need a stripped-down distro that will boot from cd, load itself into RAM and then free the cd to put in an audio or mp3 disk and have it play that. You will have to look at the mini/floppy distros, maybe modify one yourself. It needs to have the laptop drivers, the audio drivers and an mp3 player. If it's just console it should be possible, maybe you could even make TinyX work. Have a look at SmallLinux or something like that, find out how you can customize it and make it into a bootable cd. Interesting project, btw.

knoopix could be what you are looking for.

Knoppix could be good but haw to play mp3 ....if there is only one cd?????Iguess you can't just remove Knoppix cd and then put cd with music and play ?Sound impossible for me!

Well I looked at knoppix but it's tooo big. All I need i small linux that boots and during boot it starts my program which will monitor CD ROM. I don't see how it is impossible. Once linux is booted into ram with my program, no more info is needed from the boot cd.
Know, I don't pretend know much about linux but I've developed different types of systems for smart card and it's just a matter of running in RAM and you do ehat you have to do from there...

Or am I way to off?

Indy

I don't know a distro to fit your needs, so I guess you need to build one yourself... It's not very hard.

Here's your answer.....

http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html

XMMS comes on the CD....and I am talking about actually -INSTALLING- Knoppix to your puter so you won't need the CD anymore.

If you don't need some of the other stuff...just UN-install it.

BTW, you never told us how big/small your hard drive is....

You could always try Peanut Linux....

I suggest slackware, you can strip it down.

Michael

Well. this is what conclusion I made with my own reasearch:

Trinux is a pretty good choice. I have to modify it to make it run as I want it to. It's tiny and cusomisable.

I think i didn't make clear how my system is suppose to run. Here is the idea:

1. boot linux without any login request.
2. during boot, load neccesary modules e.g soundcard.
3. when finished loading, start my own developed program that monitors cdrom and run music/mp3 cds.
4. The laptop will be hidden somewhere in the car so that i will attach a button interface (built by me) to serial port.
5. a lcd display will promt the songs which probably will be getting from parrallell port.

That's it. Neat and clean. But first I must make this bootable software to do all the neccesary surrounding...

Nu-bee: There isn't any HD. OR floppy for that matter. Every thing HAS to be run in RAM.

Anybody have any tips on how to reach my goal. I'm in a pretty hurry cause i'll be off traveling in early march so i could use all the help i can get...

Indy