[Dclug] installing puppy linux on a 486

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 09:17:13PM -0400, Phil Shapiro wrote:
> 
>    hi group,
> 
>        a friend of mine gave me his 486 computer with windows 95 on it.  i'd
> love to install puppy linux on it, but ran into a hitch.  when i reach the bios,
> it says i can choose a boot sequence of Drive A and then Drive C, or Drive C and
> then Drive A.
> 
>          nowhere is the CD-ROM drive mentioned. (which is Drive D, which I can
> see from the desktop of the computer by double clicking on the Computer icon.)
> 
>           any ideas of what to try? this computer is an AT&T computer. i reached
> the bios with an F1 key. 
...


Phil,

When it boots, make a note of the name and version of BIOS.  Google this
to see whether a newer version of the BIOS is available.  It's possible
that you can get a newer version.  I don't know whether any version of a
486 BIOS would support booting from CD ROM, though.  ISTR this
capability being slow to take hold even after Pentium processors were
being used.

MSCDEX had nothing to do with booting from CD ROM, IIRC.  It was the MS
DOS CD ROM driver for some versions of MS DOS, after the system had
already booted.  It is not used in MS Windows 95.  It may have been used
in MS Windows 3.1*.

OTOH, there may have been a way to boot MS DOS from floppy disk with the
CD ROM driver, and then from that boot from the CD ROM.  OK, yes, these
seem to take that approach: <http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/cdrom/> and
<http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/elboot/index.php>.

Here's a better way that doesn't rely on MS DOS: SmartBootManager
<http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html>.


-- 
/*********************************************************************\
**
** Joe Yao				jsdy at tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao
**
\*********************************************************************/