[CLUE-Tech] Laptop for Installfest

[Matt Gushee]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 03:16:41PM -0600, Kurt Sturm wrote:
> Hello all, here is a question for anyone willing to take a crack at. I
> have a Dell Latitude CS 500 MHz Pentium 3 Laptop. I would like to
> install my copy of Mandrake 8.2 on it. But here is where it may get a
> little sketchy.

Then again, it may not. I'm not familiar with that model, but based on
my experience, there's a possibility it will just work. Have you tried
an installation on it?

> The laptop has external CD ROM and Floppy drive. Under windows you just
> execute a program that lets you hot swap the devices. There is only one
> port so either the CD ROM can be connected or the Floppy can be
> connected, both can not be plugged in at the same time. 

I would be surprised if the basic task of recognizing a device were
really dependent on Windows. Probably that program you're referring to
is accessing the BIOS to recognize/activate the device. Linux, once it's
booted, has its own means of interacting with hardware, completely 
independent of the BIOS.

Which doesn't guarantee that your drives will be recognized under Linux.
If they are I'd be willing to bet you don't need to run a special
program to hot-swap them. But it's conceivable you'd need an unusual
kernel module that might not be available during installation. 

> I was thinking about attending an installfest, to see if this can be
> done. But I don't want to waste peoples valuable time if it cannot be
> accomplished. Any thoughts on this one? 

As far as Installfests go, I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't
consider it a waste of time to learn more about what works and what
doesn't in installing Linux.

It wouldn't hurt to see if you can get some specific information about
running Linux on this model. If nobody in CLUE has done it, you might
try the Linux Laptop Home Page -- http://www.linux-laptop.net/.

Also, I'm not sure about Mandrake, but most Linux distributions offer
several installation options, so if you can't install using the normal
CD-ROM, chances are good you could use either an external CD-ROM
connected to the parallel port or some form of network installation.

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/