Re: Boot with 1.44" Floppy, then net install from thumb drive?

[Sam Varshavchik]

M de Luis writes:

>  My old NEC Versa P440 laptop computer has no working CD drive, and
> can't boot  
>  off a USB thumb drive. It does have a USB connected 1.44" floppy drive that  
>  came with a rescue disk, so I believe that it may be able to boot off that.
>   
>  Okay then, how do I make a 1.44" Linux boot disk (boot/ root pair?) with  
>  enough USB capability to let me mount a USB thumb drive, one loaded with a  
>  Net based Fedora installation iso? Bit confused about how I might invoke the  
>  USB stick's Network based installation then, should I actually manage to  
>  get a boot a basic system up from floppies?
>   
>  Please, just vague ideas are all that's really required. If there are  
>  any relevant links with which I could be very gratefully provisioned, then  
>  I'm sure to realize a solution, provided that one may be possible in this  
>  case. 
Unless my brain cells are giving out, old 3.5" floppies hold only 1.44mb of  
data.

Given that a modern kernel is already four times that big, I just can't see  
any way of bootstrapping off that. I don't think that even grub can fit onto  
a floppy (let's revisit the entire escapade of grub blowing up when the  
first partition starts at sector 63).

There might be ancient Linux distros, based around circa 2.0-version kernels  
floating out there, that might have a boot/root install path. But kernels of  
that vintage are not likely to have much, if any USB support.

You'll just have to get that CD drive fixed.