On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Ryan Verner wrote: > Gidday... > > I'm wanting to configure my Toshiba Portege 3110CT to dual boot > debian/win2k. At the moment its running XP (very, very bloddy slowly), and > I have two partitions - a 4.5gig fat32 (c:), and a 1.2gig fat32 (d:). > Basically, I want to install win2k to the 4.5gig, and erase the existing > 1.2gig fat32 and turn this into linux native/swap partitions. > > Under normal circumstances, this would be damn easy. However, the portege's > do not have internal cdrom or floppy drives. I have no floppy drive, and no > way to access one, and the cdrom drive is external (pcmcia), and even though > I know linux does support it, the toshiba bios does not allow me to boot > from this. This is the latest flashed firmware. > > The main issue is actually getting linux onto the machine. Somehow I need > to invoke the debian install program. I can't drop to DOS, as I can't think > of any way to do this, so loadlin isn't an option either. > > I can't boot from cd, I can't run loadlin, and I can't boot from floppy > disk.
I haven't had to use Windows for years but I'd be surprised/amazed if they finally got rid of the dos command prompt. They used to have some hidden text files msdos.sys I think was it, you could use "ATTRIB -R -A -S -H" or something like that to unhide it and set it up to boot to the command prompt only. Alternately F8 or F5 being pressed/held after the BIOS checks yeilded a menu where you could select command prompt. Other than this, I wonder if there's an PCMCIA Intel NIC with PXE boot around? Another option might be to use a PCMCIA SCSI cdrom. Sounds like this would be a good candidate for the weirdest install at the upcoming installfest. -- ---<GRiP>--- Web: www.arcadia.au.com/gripz Answering Machine/fax: 02 4950 1194 (wait 5 mins if no answer) Mobile: 0408 686 201 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
