Old Laptop, Boot from Floppy, Load from USB

**quietas** · 08-09-2007, 08:03 PM

Here'es the deal, I have an old laptop here at work that has been overly used and thus the hard drive is dead, infact the caddy is missing. Also the CD-ROM has a laser that no longer moves, thus no functionality there either. On top of those two, the USB will not boot.

On the plus side, I have a working floppy and USB. I managed to get DSL to boot using a boot floppy loading DSL-Embedded (with syslinux) that was copied over to the USB flash drive. It works, but DSL is very minimal compared to Knoppix.

Is there a USB boot flopppy option? I haven't seen one in searching as of yet.

**hat_monkey** · 08-11-2007, 10:50 AM

when you do a harddrive install of knoppix 5.1.1 it produces a knoppix boot floppy, maybe the floppy so produced will boot a USB but i haven't tried it.

**quietas** · 08-14-2007, 04:39 AM

Anyone tried this. I have another computer I can try this one if no one else has a better idea.

It does seem weird though that there are no boot floppies available for those with older computers. If I could boot from a floppyy and load from USB it would make it so I could use this old laptop and reduce the moving parts dramatically.

**hat_monkey** · 08-15-2007, 06:04 AM

did a quick try to boot the USB from the knoppix floppy but was unsuccessful, possibly because my floppy drive has a record of failing to read floppies for various reasons. was also hard to tell what actually booted as i have a sole knoppix hard drive install but the ensuing boot dialog was not a USB boot.
puppy linux has some info on grub/floppy booting and it may be necessary to use the info there to modify the knoppix floppy. havent had the inclination and the similtaneously required presence of mind to wrap my head around the puppy info as yet. however if you do it, I dont mind if you steal the show and post the required knoppix modifications. I am generous like that.