--This week, I replaced my 2.1G HD in the Dell laptop with a 20-gigger that had NO data on it. The laptop cannot boot from CD because of a BIOS EEPROM password (it's Used) that I haven't cleared yet. In addition, it's one of those rigs that has EITHER the floppy OR the CD-drive, NOT both. To get Knoppix and Windoze installed and the HD configged like I wanted, I had to use Tomsrtbt (floppy-based Linux) to fdisk the HD, enable a swap partition (mkswap -c /dev/hdaN) and set the boot partition flag.

--Then, since Tomsrtbt doesn't need its floppy after boot, I threw in the latest boot-en.img floppy and DD'ed it to the HD as described before.

--After doing all this, I booted to a W98 startup disk, ran ' fdisk/mbr ', formatted C:/s/v , swapped in the CD drive again with Knoppix, and booted it. I used mc to copy the Knoppix file to C:, restored my old backup of the former drive, and all was well!

--The point is, you don't have to run Knoppix to run a *basic* Linux that only needs to do maintenance stuff like I did.

Tomsrtbt page: http://www.toms.net/rb/

Quote Originally Posted by SUOrangeman
Yes, Knoppix can run at 640x480. Check out the "cheat codes" text file on the CD or online. There is a parameter you add to the command when booting Knoppix.

Dave_Bechtel, your method of imaging a floppy to a small partition on the hard drive DOES work. The only quirk is that you must be in Linux to apply the method you suggested. But if you cannot boot into any form of Linux in the first place, you can't really make use of your method.

-SUO