hi

got a realy realy old laptop without a cd-rom but a floppy drive... what is a OS that you can load with nothing but floppy disk? Or any other suggestions would be nice as well

You could probably find a floppy-sized thing that will allow you to download an image of a different OS from somewhere.

Up to Windows 95, if I remember correctly there was the floppy disk version.

But basically, (with LOTS of patience) you can install any later OS, using a local install directory and an awful number of floppy writing/copying/swapping.

Which processor and how mch RAM has the laptop?

jaclaz

I know Windos 98 can be loaded from floppy, the reason I know this is because we ran across an entire set of Windows 98 install floppys at work last spring, when we were doing some cleaning, unfortunately we threw them all away because we figured we didn't need them any longer.

http://veder.com/nwdsk/

or a PXE-stack on a floppy can be helpful. (etherboot.org)

Windows 95 often came on a stack of floppies (never seen Win98 like that though). But man, it took FOREVER to install. You were swapping floppies for over an hour. So I'd say Win 3.x was the last tolerable version, and there aren't too many practical uses for Win 3.x anymore. Besides, floppies are way too unreliable nowadays.

I'm not really sure what the whole point of it is, as DVD writers can be had for $25 everyday, 2GB USB drives (that will fit way more than just XP) around $10, and you can still install from a network share (boot to dos with NDIS2 drivers, map network share, install from there), or straight from PXE, etc. You could even pull the hard drive out, and plug it in another computer to copy the installation files on it. So many possibilities... No one is stuck with "just floppies".

Floppies are excruciatingly slow (mere kilobytes per second) to read and also to write, often had errors, have a ridiculously low capacity (just think about it, a simple 700MB ISO is over 450 floppies, and a DVD like Vista would be over 3000), and a lot of PCs don't even have floppy drives nowadays -- I've been floppy-free since 2001 (good riddance). There's plenty of better alternatives out there. All the other methods (from USB, across network, etc) will be faster, are more reliable, and as a bonus you won't have to waste an hour of your life changing floppies every couple minutes.

Maybe you missed the "really old" part of the post.

I have an Extensa with floppy and 2.1 Gbyte Hard Disk. (yes it has Windows 95)
NO USB
NO NETWORK

Since I am a "smart" guy , I do have a PCMCIA Archos CD Reader 8x that "doubles" as "walkman" as it works out of rechargeable batteries and has a socket for a headset.

I boot a floppy with a DOS PCMCIA driver+SHSUCDX and can install copy almost anything to it.

If I recall correctly it has 48 Mb of memory and a 100 or 133Mhz processor

jaclaz

PS: and I have also a 56K (actually a 33K upgraded) PCMCIA modem and a 10 Mbit PCMCIA Network card, the early PCMCIA version, never tried to boot a network payload using an etherboot floppy, though.

This post has been edited by jaclaz: Aug 5 2008, 12:21 PM

I'd go with the rubbish bin with it.

You dont want to try installing Windows 95 via floppys because you'll end up throwing it in the bin, when you get half way through and find one floppy is damaged. Plus it takes for ever.

I had an old IBM which I had to install Windows 95 on via floppy disks.

98 however I've never seen on floppy.

Take the HDD out, plug it into a diff pc, copy install files onto it, put it back in.

98 has floppies. I believe the number was around 35.

I've done a 98 install with floppies. I think it was 33 but you had two extra disks. An emergency boot disk and something else. So ya, 35 does indeed sound right. The problem with 98 on floppies is that maybe disk 32 was bad and you'd be screwed because it would be 2 hours in that you'd find that out.

Also Windows NT 3.51 had a floppy install as well.

I have a gateway solo 2100
133mhz
64mb ram



i know if i put windows 2k on it that it would probally still be pretty slow lol, but this would be for a realy young kid & internet activity is about it.

no NIC, no Modem, but has 2 pcmcia slots ( one of which i would use for a nic )

but anyone know a way to slap windows 2k on there? someone was telling me about a way that you could install the cab files onto the hdd like from another machine then have a boot disk that would run/extract them? but they only knew of one for windows ME.

um, how about NwDsk? If XP can be installed with winnt.exe and DOS, why not 2000?

One option not yet mentioned is using the parallel printer port for transfering installation files to the laptop's hard drive.
This can be done by crossover cable (Laplink or Parcp) or by attaching an external box to the parallel port containing
a CDROM player or hard drive inside. That box usually has some interface which translates the parallel port's logic to
a standard IDE or ATA connector.

A variation of the parallel port solution is using a parallel port ZIP drive.
The ZIP disks are 100MB and there are drivers for both DOS and for all Windows systems.
With 3 of these disks you'd have the installation files copied in 5 minutes.
There are also ZIPs with 250MB capacity disks.

Another option, not mentioned for obvious reasons, is the RS232 or serial port.
In a similar manner to a Laplink or Parcp cable, a so-called null-modem cable connects your laptop to some other
computer and then starts a long night and day of transferring the installation files. This is probably the slowest
method of doing this.

No matter what method you choose to transfer the installation files to your laptop drive, which you MUST do,
because there's no CDROM reader, you end up with a local folder containing the complete set of installation
files. In the case of W98 it is adviseable to let them stay there even after installation is completed. As soon as you
make some change to your system, or install some piece of hardware, like a printer, the installed W98 system will
again start asking you for installation files.

I'd say the easiest method of doing this is that you take out that 2.5" laptop HDD and attach it internally to some
other computer. If that other computer is a laptop, you don't even need any adapter between the 2.5" HDD connector
and the bigger 3.5" HDD connector.

After you've returned the drive to its original laptop, now filled with that installation folder, start up with DOS,
cd to the install directory and type setup or install. Something like this:

>
C:
cd W98
dir *.exe
setup

The above is from distant memory, so use your own judgement.
A W98 installation should commence.

Please note that you can not install directly from the serial or parallel port cable or devices.
The same goes for USB on older machines.

But if you had a SCSI card in the PCMCIA slot, and then a CDROM reader attached to that SCSI interface,
you'd be able to install your OS directly from that.

If you have a Type-II PC Card slot (PCMCIA) you might be able to find one of those hard disk controllers to go in there. I know Adaptec used to make one, since it used to come with the external Iomega drives... Zip or Jaz, I forget.

Nothing higher than Win98SE. Agree on the suggestions as to "how to get it installed". A final option (if you can find it) is to install Windows For Workgroups (WFW 3.11) first via floppy then decide how to connect to install the Win9x variety (Win3.x can then be "deleted"). Just a variation on the above suggestions; you still need to "connect" (Laplink easiest).

DOH! Forgot - DOS 6(?) can connect you too. Software downloadable from MS FTP site (not DOS, the "connection" software). 5 Floppies total to get up-and-running. And won't swear to this (never tried it) but perhaps a simple Boot Floppy might be "copied" to the HDD then get the Connection Software installed - 3(?) floppies.

May actually be easiest to do as suggested - disconnect the HDD, move it, format it, copy the install files, put it back, boot floppy, then run Setup. Careful opening up the lappie!

This post has been edited by submix8c: Aug 26 2008, 05:12 PM

Windows 3.1, Windows 1.0, Microsoft DOS (any version), and Windows 95.

@Redhatcc

Well, my Amiga500 does it all the time.

Agi

This post has been edited by AgiHammerklau: Aug 31 2008, 11:50 AM

Try the following and let us know how you get on
KolibriOS - 1 floppy
Balder - based on FreeDOS - 1 floppy

FreeDOS + OpenGEM - ~10 floppies?
Basic Linux - Slackware 4 + X + e-mail + presentation - 2 floppies
Mungkie - aka 2diskXwin - 2 floppies
Grey Cat Linux - Slackware based with IceWM - ~10 floppies?

Maybe Debian 3.0 (Woody)
or Debian 3.1 (Sarge)

This post has been edited by darrelljon: Sep 5 2008, 05:31 AM