On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 12:56:48 +1200 Roger Searle wrote: > i'm getting old enough (but not THAT old) to struggle these days in this > department. > > when i moved that drive to the other machine temporarily, i was probably > thinking: > "must remember to change the jumper back" > "must remember to change the jumper back" > "must remember to change the jumper back" > "must remember to change the jumper back" > > and an hour later had totally forgotten :-(
I hate moving hardware. It means shutting my system down, opening it up etc and the cover seems to stay off for weeks, my wife complains about the mess yada yada yada Once I got two new computers for the office, no cdrom in either. I set about installing windows and associated software without installing a cd. Windows boot disks are easy to make, but they don't easily do networking. Basically i booted linux from a floppy, formatted the hard drive as vfat, made a directory called win98, used wget to transfer the install files from a linux machine, then booted again with the win98 floppy, and ran c:\setup.exe. There are many variations on this - ie ways of getting the initial files onto a bare box. I have to admit that sometimes it'd be easier to simply shift the cdrom in a situation like that, but then again I learned something from the experience. Once windows was installed of course I could install any other software over the network by having samba share the cdrom drive on the linux box. So next time maybe you will leave the cdrom drive where it usually lives and avoid the problem! -- Nick Rout
