FWIW, I had to disconnect the hard drive when it died to get booting from CD to complete on an older PC of mine
Nice to know, others in same boat
I'm not clear whether the CD-ROM was working with PlopLinux (which I assume was release 3.7.15).
[root@rescue ~]# uname -r
2.6.27.7-ploplinux
[root@rescue ~]# uname -a
Linux rescue 2.6.27.7-ploplinux #2 PREEMPT Tue Nov 25 19:47:17 GMT 2008 i686 pentium2 i386 GNU/Linux
[root@rescue ~]# mkdir cd
[root@rescue ~]# mount /dev/hdb cd -tiso9660
mount: block device /dev/hdb is write-protected, mounting read-only
[root@rescue ~]# ls cd
boot index.html KNOPPIX lost+found
[root@rescue ~]# umount cd
[root@rescue ~]# mount /dev/hdb cd -tiso9660
mount: block device /dev/hdb is write-protected, mounting read-only
[root@rescue ~]# ls cd
Directions Images
[root@rescue ~]# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=620)
/dev/sda3 on /media type vfat (rw,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1)
/dev/loop0 on /sbin type squashfs (ro)
/dev/loop1 on /lib type squashfs (ro)
/dev/loop2 on /usr type squashfs (ro)
/dev/loop3 on /bin type squashfs (ro)
/dev/sda1 on /s type reiserfs (rw)
/dev/hdb on /root/cd type iso9660 (ro)
/dev/sda1 on /root/s type reiserfs (rw)
...If so I wonder how your system would get along with a more recent version of that distribution (e.g. release 4.2.1 with kernel 3.3.1).
I'll give it a whirl.
Hang on a sec though, but isn't one of the tenets of TCB to rescue old computers from the scrap heap? I'm not too hot on h/w, being a s/w man myself