Intro & pcmcia cdrom query

[Mark Dulcey]

Mike Bilow wrote:
> 
> You have two options.  Personally, I would prefer to install Linux using a
> 3.5-to-2.5 disk adapter.  These are available for about $5-15 and allow
> connecting a 2.5-inch notebook hard drive to a standard desktop IDE
> controller designed to mate with 3.5-inch hard drives.
> 
> However, for regular installation of software and so forth, you really
> need a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive.  The ideal type is one which uses an IDE
> controller for the PCMCIA card, and most of the really cheap ones (such as
> my I/O Magic MCD540) work this way.

If the notebook is your only computer, this is true. If you also
have a desktop system, though, you have another choice - network
installation. A Linux-compatible PCMCIA Ethernet card (most of
them these days) plus an Ethernet card for the desktop system
will do the trick. Then you mount the CD-ROM on your desktop
system, export it via NFS, and mount it on the notebook. The Red
Hat and SuSE Linux installers (and probably other distributions
as well) even support installing Linux that way.


-- 
Mark J. Dulcey               mark at buttery.org
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