[SOLVED] Best Distro For Partly Disabled Laptop

Zak0Zak0 · 05-27-2010, 08:13 PM

Hi guys,
I got a hold of an old latop, an ASUS A1000, that got it's RAM "burned" from 256MB down to 64MB. I still got its 40GB hard drive running fine, but the CD drive's quirky (reads only commercially pressed discs from what I can tell), and the floppy's bust. And no USB booting either.

My question is, what would be the best distro to use for this junker? I can't boot from any device except for the hard disk itself, and the only CD i have that can be read is a Win98SE installer, which can get me to a DOS prompt.

I can transfer the hard disk to another linux system and copy contents from there to the laptop HD, but what do I need to put in? I've tried putting in a Puppy Linux universal install there but it seems it won't load due to not having enough RAM.

Simon Bridge · 05-28-2010, 03:13 AM

Damn Small Linux?

Burn the CD using the audiomaster setting.
Personally, I'd hunt for another old laptop to cannibalise.

Zak0Zak0 · 05-28-2010, 06:28 AM

It is small enough, think I'll give it a try! Hopefully I can finally burn a CD that can be read properly. Or maybe I can copy the ISO's contents to the laptop's hard disk, set the boot flag, and run it that way, a la live CD?

linus72 · 05-28-2010, 06:48 AM

hey ZakOZakO

Quote:

Or maybe I can copy the ISO's contents to the laptop's hard disk, set the boot flag, and run it that way, a la live CD?

you could also check out KolibriOS
its kinda limited
but needs only 10MB RAM with X
and it's really small (3mb)

to boot it off hdd
grab the floppy img and memdisk(boots floppy imgs)
http://www.kolibrios.org/
Memdisk
http://multidistro.com/downloads/memdisk

I included it in ThorsHammerII
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Syste...II-55542.shtml

heres an example isolinux.cfg/syslinux.cfg

Code:

label kolcdusb
menu label ^Kolibri OS 0.7.7.0
kernel /boot/memdisk floppy
append initrd=/kolibri.img floppy

grub1 menu.lst

Code:

title Kolibri OS 0.7.7.0
root (hdx,x)
kernel /boot/memdisk floppy
initrd /kolibri.img floppy

Zak0Zak0 · 05-28-2010, 06:52 PM

Thanks linus72, i'll check kolibri out, looks promising

Zak0Zak0 · 05-30-2010, 12:13 PM

Took awhile but I finally got Damn Small Linux running. Kolibri was, in my opinion, a little limited (some parts in russian). Used PloP to be able to boot off from USB, and LinuxLive USB Creator for a DSL USB stick. Unetbootin kept putting the wrong files, had to try and dissect the syslinux.cfg only to find out it's looking at the wrong places for booting (/boot/isolinux/syslinux when there was no /boot directory).

Anyways thanks for all the help!

fruttenboel · 05-30-2010, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zak0Zak0

Hi guys,
I got a hold of an old latop, an ASUS A1000, that got it's RAM "burned" from 256MB down to 64MB. I still got its 40GB hard drive running fine, but the CD drive's quirky (reads only commercially pressed discs from what I can tell), and the floppy's bust. And no USB booting either.

My question is, what would be the best distro to use for this junker? I can't boot from any device except for the hard disk itself, and the only CD i have that can be read is a Win98SE installer, which can get me to a DOS prompt.

I can transfer the hard disk to another linux system and copy contents from there to the laptop HD, but what do I need to put in? I've tried putting in a Puppy Linux universal install there but it seems it won't load due to not having enough RAM.

Slackware 12.2