Installing Gentoo on an old laptop

[bobwhoops]

Hi,

I have a lovely old laptop I'd like to install Gentoo on. Originally, it had no ethernet, no cdrom drive, and no USB. However, I bought a PCMCIA ethernet adapter for it.

Currently, it's running Windows 98. I want to change this : )

The problem is I don't know how to install Gentoo on it. It doesn't have a PXE, so I can't network boot. Etherboot won't work either because it doesn't support PCMCIA cards. I guess I have to do something with a floppy, but I don't know what. Any ideas?

[Catch-22]

There are a few linux distros that fit on a floppy
eg.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/

I think all you need is fdisk (to format your HD) and then some way to get the stage3 tarball and portage snapshot (whether that be via wget or ftp/scp'ed from a local server is your choice I suppose). You just have to hope that your network interface is recognised. The rest should be fine once you chroot into your new system.

HTH

/edit

This distro is recommended via the Alt install guide
http://mininux.free.fr/uk/

[mitschel]

I`ve done nearly the same last night. But I`ve solved the problem with an 2.5" adapter for my desktop pc and a knoppix cd. It works fine!

[koenderoo]

He has no cd-rom drive so knoppix won't work for him.

What might work is an emulator. That should be able to start from win98. Prior to that you need to partition your hard drive with win98 still working. Therefore you may consider Partition Magic.
With the emulator you can simulate a linux environment and act like that is your start.
What you do need to have is the installation cd unpacked in a map on the win98 drive and mount that in the emulator. You can see this mountpoint as the cd-rom. this means unpacking the iso with Magic-iso.

Keeping in mind that the cd-rom is substituted for the mountpoint you must be able to install gentoo like in the manual.