install ubuntu without CD-rom drive?

[Eberhard Roloff]

On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 13:54:34 +0200
Eberhard Roloff <tuxebi at gmx.de> wrote:

> 
> "Tod Merley" <todbot88 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Replies at bottom:
> > 
> > On 9/8/06, JeremyWorst <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:
> > >
> [Laptop cannot boot from external CDRom, connected via
> PCMCIA]
> 
>   
> > Hi Again Jeremy!
> > 
> > Two things:
> > 
> > 1. Memory!!  I hope you have the max. (128mb) but I would
> > guess that you are at at the original (64mb).  That is not
> > enough for Ubuntu. Even 128mb is too small for a decent
> > graphical environment (but could probably be done).  
> 
> Well, I guess, Xubuntu will run acceptably well on this machine
> (with 128mb). I tried on a desktop PI/166 and this worked
> pretty ok, as long as I did not give in to the tempatation to
> start OOorg. ;-)
> 
> Probably
> > time to go to www.linux.org > Distributions : English :
> > minimalist.  There are several ( tomsrtbt is well known:
> > http://www.toms.net/rb/ ) which fit on one or two floppies.
> > Perhaps you can use one of them to load - say Puppy Linux
> > which, once on the HD could easily be happy with the 64mb.
> > 
> if ubuntu does not work out for you, you might also try
> damnsmallinux (see: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/)
> 
> 
> > 2. I note that the normal box comes with a CD (pretty
> > common).  You mention one which attaches through the PCMCIA
> > bus.  Well, I wonder if you could find something a bit
> > closer.  It is hard to believe that a computer actually
> > cannot boot from CD.
> 
> Well, according to
> http://www.pcauthority.com.au/review.aspx?CIaRID=141, the box
> indeed comes with an external cd-rom, conncected via PCMCIA, as
> stated by the PO, and remember, the box is SMALL ;-). 
> 
> In contrast to your statement, I have no hard time to believe
> that a computer cannot boot frm CDrom. I had plenty of PI
> Compaq Notebooks that would not even bother to boot from
> internal ide cd-drives. Although, in the latter case, I could
> always use "smart bootmanager", http://btmgr.webframe.org/,
> but this will probably not be usable here, if the cdrom-drive
> is unaccessible at boot timee.
> > 
Hi I just looked it up more closely, and on the site, it is
written:
cite on:
Booting from CD-ROM
Smart BootManager supports booting from almost all kinds of IDE
ATAPI CD-ROM, including PCMCIA CD-ROMs. You can let BIOS boot
from C: only and assign a password for it, then you can boot
from CD-ROM with Smart BootManager easily, while other guy
couldn't. If you have a Laptop computer with a special PCMCIA
CD-ROM which BIOS does not support booting from, Smart
BootManager can help you make it easy!
:cite off

So this might possibly be your solution. For what it is worth, I
always had good results with Smartbootmanager, booting Machines
from CD that were never meant to even think of CD boots.DEspite
this I freely admit, that I never tried it on an
external CD-Rom Drive

good luck
Eberhard