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-   -   Boot disk; check. CD in drive; check. Doesn't work; check. (

Hal 01-07-2004 01:45 PM

Hi, I'm having a little difficulty with Damn Small Linux. I am trying to get it running on my little 75mhz job. Don't laugh, he can handle Win 98 fine.

I got the boot floppy to work, bringing me to the 'boot:' prompt and have pressed enter. But then it tries to search for the KNOPPIX filesystem, and gives me:


Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
The DSL CD is in the drive....any ideas?

jailbait 01-07-2004 05:45 PM

Is the CD-ROM on an IDE interface or is it one of the old type that has its own controller card?

Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.

Steve Stites

cowmamba 01-08-2004 10:31 AM

well maybe one solution for you is if you want to install it (the easy way)
is if you can find an avalible pc just take that hdd out and put it in the the other one long enought to install it onto that hard drive and then put it back in the computer your trying to boot it on ....

what i mean if that sounded a little confusing...

take the hard drive out of the computer you are trying to run (DSL) damn small linux on and put that hard drive into a different (better computer/newer) so you can do the install on that then after you have it installed then you take it out of the computer you installed it on and put it back into the one your trying to run it on .......

Hal 01-08-2004 12:24 PM

First of all, thanks Jailbait, I googled around and learned a bit about IDE and controller cards.

I understood what you were trying to say cowmamba! It's just that I am a bit reluctant to open up the old computer tower; it's very dusty!

The problem was that I was using a CD RW instead of a CD R! :p thanks anyway... The most simple explanation is often the right one.

I am now running DSL; it works much better than Win 98. I really like the window manager, fluxbox or something? I will have to see if I can get it on my Red Hat 9 system! :D

ac1980 01-08-2004 05:07 PM

Just a suggestion, since I have a (good) working P75, too... If you have a home network, and a recent computer (say >P2 - 300MHz, I have a p3-450) you can put a minimal system on your p75: using debian, I put base-system, xserver-xfree86, binutils and nfsd to export the local win98 disk. Then I make it run at startup X --query camera where camera is a (debian) system with gdm configured to accept remote logins from local net... so both me and my parents use the same (fast) cpu/mem. Since cpu usage is bursty by nature, most of the time one wouldn't notice how many users are logged in.

PS: on the p75 terminal, the whole installation took 100M (32M swap+55 system + 15 free for upgrades)

DuncanM 01-12-2004 10:38 PM


I tried to get DSL running on my Dad's old P100 but it couldn't read my CD-RW disk.

So if I try a CD-R it should work?

Egg sell ent ;).

Hal 01-21-2004 12:40 PM

I say give it a try, it worked for me! :p

The_Q 02-04-2004 03:10 AM

Why would I laugh at a p75, whemn I'm running it on a dx4-100 486 !!!\

The old hardware is back from its previous use as a firewall. (works great too)

Little short on apps. but working

...... Can we compile anything on this version ... GCC and such available ???
