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Marcus658
07-25-2003, 09:39 AM
All,

hopefully someone can help me out. I'm booting from CD but it drops me anytime to this "very limited shell" (only cat, insmod,... is available).
Here some details and what i tried out so far:

System: Toshiba Portege 3440 with (Freecom)CDROM via PCMCIA.
Knoppix: Vers 3.2 and 3.1 (two different CDs, both worked fine on other PCs)

I tried out:
a) at start prompt: ide2=0x180 ->no impact
b) several knoppix noscsi,... -> no impact
c) the seperate boot disk images from luelljoc ->no impact
d) following the idea that Freecom CDROM w/h PCMCIA are only working with IRQ3 (posted on www.xenonsoft.demon.co.uk/freecom-cdrw.html) I changed /pcmcia/etc/config the ide-cs device entry from

#device "ide-cs"
# class "ide" module "ide-cs"
#
to

device "ide-cs"
class "ide" module "ide-cs" opts "irq_list=3"
(Thanx to luelljoc without your bootimages I couldn't try this)
Anyone out there with new ideas?
Thanx in advance, Marcus

luelljoc
08-10-2003, 04:17 PM
Hi Marcus,

the disk images worked on a Toshiba Portege 3110 with (Freecom) PCMCIA CDROM.
So it should be possible to get this working on your Portege as well.
When the PMCIA Modules are loaded does the CDROM power LED light up ?
Because I don't read the forums regularly you can also send me eMail (jochen at luell.com) and we can figure things out.

Bye
Jochen

wtbates
08-25-2003, 07:29 PM
I also have a Toshiba Portege 3340 with a PCMCIA CD-ROM and I cannot get Knoppix to boot. I have the same results as Marcus. :cry:

Has anyone found a fix?

Bill

ewanrg
08-28-2003, 02:25 PM
I have a Toshiba Portege 3500 and am using a "Port" Noteworthy PCMCIA CD drive, and am also unable to get Knoppix to boot past the "Very Limited Shell". I'd be very interested in a fix (software or procedure).

Thanks,
Ewan

luelljoc
08-28-2003, 03:22 PM
Hi,

please try the boot disks at: http://www.luell.com/projects.html#otherprojects.
If it's not working please send me a mail (jochen at luell.com), because I'm not reading the groups on a regular basis.

Bye
Jochen

ewanrg
08-28-2003, 03:40 PM
please try the boot disks at: http://www.luell.com/projects.html#otherprojects.
If it's not working please send me a mail (jochen at luell.com), because I'm not reading the groups on a regular basis.


I'll email as well, but a floppy option doesn't work because the Toshiba Portege 3500 doesn't have a floppy drive of any kind. I could get a PCMCIA Floppy, but that would then cause a problem since there's only one PCMCIA slot on this machine and I couldn't hook up the CD with the Floppy there.

Hoping there's another solution out there,
Ewan

wtbates
08-28-2003, 08:45 PM
The 3440 does not have a floppy drive either. I do have a USB floppy, but if the only workaround is to use a boot disk then it is not worth it to me either.

Thanks for the info anyway luelljoc. I will give it a try just to see if it works and report back (probably not until after the weekend).

Bill

ewanrg
09-03-2003, 03:23 PM
So I'm gathering no one else is having any luck either?

I tried running Knoppix on another laptop, but Knoppix would die not long after boot up when it would see the attached LaCie Big Disk (360 Gig Firewire HD).

Guess I'm just not a typical enough user... :-)

tx
09-23-2003, 10:24 AM
Same problem here. I'm using a Toshiba Portege 3110ct with the freecom pcmcia cdrom, and an external floppy drive.

I can boot and run a plain Debian installation from cd (woody r2 minicd), though the only kernel which seems to include support for the cdrom is the default (ie 2.2.18?) kernel, neither bf24 or idepci finds the cdrom drive after booting.

Knoppix just drops me out to the shell mini-environment. ("Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.")

luelljoc's floppy images does also not work for me, only the i82092 and pcmcia_core modules are loaded. Here the cd-dom does not even seem to get power so I can eject it - which works when I boot from the regular KNOPIX cd.

I have contacted mr Luell in this matter, waiting for a reply.

Meanwhile, does anyone else have any ideas?

cerberos76
09-25-2003, 12:04 AM
Hi,
I have exactly the same problem. Running from a Toshiba Portege 3110CT, tried to boot the Knoppix 3.3 beta 22-9-2003.

IT does start from the cd-rom (pressing c at the start), but after loading linuz etc. , it tells "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry" and you are stuck in aminishell that is useless (you cannot even reboot to try another combination of cheatcodes).

Tried many many combinations with no luck.
Can anyone help?

tx
09-25-2003, 08:28 AM
Hi cerberos76,

I contacted luelljoc who made the boot-floppies for the portege mentioned above, and we are working on a solution to this problem.

Expect more information shortly.

.- tx

tx
09-28-2003, 04:07 PM
Hi everybody,

after several changes and a lot of testing the floppies for running Knoppix off of a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive are finally ready for a new release!

Jochen Luell has put the new images up on his site at:
http://www.luell.com/projects.html#knoppix_pcmcia

If you have the hardware, please test these boot floppies and report back to the forum!

I have verified success on my Toshiba Portege 3110ct with the external Freecom PCMCIA CD-ROM drive, using the floppies and the latest (2003-09-22) Knoppix ISO.

On the Portege 3110ct just boot with cheatcode fb800x600 screen=800x600

English speaking users might also want to specify lang=us to get your language and keymap setup since this boot floppy is based on the german Knoppix boot floppy.

Thanks to Jochen for his good work putting this together!

Best regards,

David aka tx

ewanrg
09-29-2003, 12:02 PM
Glad to hear that if you have a floppy drive AND a PCMCIA drive there is an answer.

Any hope for those of us who ONLY have a PCMCIA CD drive?

drcpu
10-01-2003, 09:02 PM
Here is my experience with my Sony Vaio SR-33 (ie., with no built-in floppy or CD-ROM so I had to use a PCMCIA cardbus CD-ROM instead).

To boot up Knoppix, I had to use the following boot cheatcode: knoppix ide2=0x180 nopcmcia

Without the 'nopcmcia', the system will hang after it tries to load the PCMCIA/hotplug manager. Without the 'ide2' tag, it'll hang and sang that there is no filesystem.

I successfully booted it up. I even have it installed on the HDD using the 'tohdd' cheatcode and then running from the HDD with the 'fromhdd'. I also have the notebook booting it up by default after fiddling around with the partition tables. :)

ewanrg
10-02-2003, 03:08 PM
Here is my experience with my Sony Vaio SR-33 (ie., with no built-in floppy or CD-ROM so I had to use a PCMCIA cardbus CD-ROM instead).

Well I tried that with my Port Noteworthy PCMCIA CD-ROM, and I still got the no file system message with the limited share.

Is it possible that I need to use a different ide2= value than 0x180?

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Ewan

ewanrg
10-06-2003, 08:25 PM
FWIW I've tried this using the nopcmcia option and not, and can't say that I see a difference. Trying failsafe also fails.

Still hoping for a suggestion.

Thanks,
Ewan

Warmboot
11-03-2003, 05:05 PM
I'm in the same boat as many others here. Is there some option for users without floppy drives?

I know that Jochen Luell created those boot floppies, does anyone know if it's possible to roll those changes into a single live CD?

crummy
01-16-2004, 10:19 PM
I have the same problem, yet I'm not on a laptop - my BENQ 52x24x52 CDRW is IDE...

Uvegeez
01-22-2004, 12:32 AM
The Dell Latitude D400 has USB/proprietary connection for it's floppy/CD-ROM drives. Booting from the CD works but then puts me into the limited shell. Dell makes some USB flash drives that can be made bootable (I know, I tried, It worked) and this may be the answer that this post is looking for (provided that the BIOS supports USB boot). Any ideas as to how this could be done? Tomorrow I will try to copy a boot floppy to the key and I will follow up.

evilbastard
02-04-2004, 01:13 AM
:shock: Ive the same problem cant boot from cdrom Im playing with it and watching this thread. 40460XCDT iz my hunk of junk trying to run knopix-std on it. If I get it to boot by mistake Ill post. Im thinking mabey a sledge hammer and alot of anger might solve my problem. :twisted:

skaag
03-17-2004, 06:01 PM
...
I have verified success on my Toshiba Portege 3110ct with the external Freecom PCMCIA CD-ROM drive, using the floppies and the latest (2003-09-22) Knoppix ISO.
...


I have the same model of the Toshiba Portege 3110ct, with an external pcmcia cdrom model F-TO-TCD-24L (Says on the sticker "designed for Toshiba Portege 3110 CT").

I boot the first floppy (boot disk), and the second (pcmcia drivers) floppy, then the external cdrom lights up just fine and it starts seeking for the knoppix files. It proceeds to mount the knoppix cd and succeeds, under /cdrom. I know this because It fails at some point on module cloop.o and throws me back into the limited shell.

I'm getting really desparate with this - any ideas what to try next? I tried with and without the cheatcodes you suggested, and even tried the ide2=0x180 parameter. Nothing seems to help with the cloop.o failure.

Thanks,

Skaag

pry3i
03-22-2004, 11:12 PM
i am also using the same freecom drive with a 3490ct - having problems
as well. almost as though the pcmcia drivers arent being read when i
insert the second floppy.


i cant help but wonder if it would be easier to remaster the cd with the
disks in the .img - too bad i'm a noob and have very little idea what i am
getting into.

skaag
03-23-2004, 11:40 AM
Ok, I actually managed to do this and now have Knoppix installed and working perfectly on the laptop.

I followed the advice of Kano on channel #Knoppix on irc.freenode.net. Kano is in charge of the Kanotix release. His advice was to put the entire content of the cdrom onto the FAT32 partition on which Windows was running (This laptop has dual boot, Windows and Linux together). Using this technique I did not need any special boot floppies with pcmcia drivers.

When you turn on the laptop, you need to press C (for cdrom) several times, until the red Toshiba logo appears. It will then proceed to boot the regular knoppix bootable cd, but at the stage where it is looking for knoppix on the cdrom, and can not find it because it does not have the cdrom drivers, it will proceed to scan the other local partitions, and it will find the Knoppix directory from the cdrom and simply start from there!

At this point, it's just the same as with any other knoppix installation... run knoppix-installer and you'r good to go.

Good luck to you all,

Skaag

bill21h
06-19-2004, 03:01 AM
I saw there were people griping about the Sony Vaio SR-33 and booting from the pcmcia cdrom drive. Try this, it works on mine.
knoppix ide2=0x180,0x386 pci=off

Mumtaz
06-21-2004, 10:14 PM
So it should be possible to get this working on your Portege as well.
When the PMCIA Modules are loaded does the CDROM power LED light up ?



I just tried Luell's PCMCIA Boot Disks (http://www.luell.com/projects.html#otherprojects) on my Toshiba Portege 3440ct. The LED on the PCMCIA CD drive did *not* lit after the second (PCMCIA module) disk was inserted. Instead it displayed "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry" message and dropped me to a very limited shell.

Note that I have a USB floppy drive, and a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive. My woeful :( account of installation attempt with a query on this forum (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11423) remains answered.

PS: I am also sending this message to Mr Luell, hoping to hear from him.

mentat
07-18-2004, 07:55 PM
I've been trying to get knoppix to work with my toshiba portege 3505 for a few versions now. I've tried the "ide2=0x180 nopcmcia" with both knoppix and knoppix26. I've also tried "ide2=0x140" with and without the pcmcia because it shows that address when plugging in the pcmcia cd-rom (the toshiba pa3246U-1DVD) to an already running knoppix system. The problem seems to be that ide-cs doesn't load on boot whereas it does load when already running the system. There doesn't seem to be any way to add it via the so-called limited shell (limited is certainly an appropriate term though useless might be better). I've also tried using bootfrom=/dev/hda1/knoppix/k*.iso. However, looking at the boot messages with knoppix26 it seems that the partition table isn't recoginized during booting. I'm not sure what the problem is with that since it's just one volume with ntfs. It's recognized correctly by the RedHat installer. I'm considering creating a 700 MB ext2 partition and trying to boot the cd image from that, but that would be an unfortunate workaround. Have there been any more developments with the problem?

Jansi
07-30-2004, 03:25 AM
I saw there were people griping about the Sony Vaio SR-33 and booting from the pcmcia cdrom drive. Try this, it works on mine.
knoppix ide2=0x180,0x386 pci=off

Wow, your little trick worked where nothing else was... where did you get that "pci=off" part?

Background: I have a vaio, and had tried "knoppix ide2=0x180 nopcmcia" like the cheatcode said, and it didn't work (usual "dropping you in to a limited shell" biz). I'm mystified how you knew to try the "pci=off" part. Is that listed somewhere? If not, it should be!

Thanks much!

edgarh
10-24-2004, 08:35 PM
I want to complain too !!! :)

Portege 2000 ... Not working !! :S

Rubane
11-02-2004, 12:28 AM
I've got a Portege 3480 and finally got everything working with knoppix, I used the poor mans install from a ntfs windows xp partition. I lost the link but if you google poor man's knoppix I'm sure you'll come up with it. Basically what you do is copy the iso to a directory in xp, install grub and modify the boot.ini file to boot into knoppix. Not very hard to setup and it works great!

w@ter
05-25-2005, 08:23 PM
Try this, it works on mine.
knoppix ide2=0x180,0x386 pci=off THANX man !!! i have been trying passively for months to make knoppix run on my Compaq Pressario R3000. but with no effect. i have tryied failsafe and it boot up. so i can install knoppix on my laptop. but when shutting down or just restarting the system - there was some problems. but now !!!! it's working !!! THX

strobes
07-25-2006, 02:53 AM
Well, here is my experience with Toshiba Portege 3480 and PCMCIA CDROM - it failed,
but when I connected an USB CDROM with a second copy of Knopix it booted first of the PCMCIA drive and moved to the USB drive looking for file system. So I think that PCMCIA driver is not started but usb is at boot time.
For some one without USB CDRM a USB memory stick can be used until, I hope developers can correct the problem with the PCMCIA driver. ( please don't flame me if everyone knows this, but reading the post, I think this is the problem)