mount via loadlin

[gerits]

Hello,

I have an old laptop here and I want to install a light and fast linux. I've tried tinycorelinux in vmware and I really liked it, so now I want to install it on my laptop.

Because my laptop doesn't have a cd drive or floppy and cannot mount from usb I've to try it with loadlin.

But when I enter:

Code: [Select]

loadlin.exe bzimage initrd=tinycore.gzit just gives me a blank screen..

How can I start tinycore linux?

edit: I've also tried linld, but also this gives me a black screen...

[gwalther]

I have used linld with tc 1.4 on my old win98 laptop successfully.
I boot directly into dos to use linld....don't think it will work if you drop down from windows to command prompt or use option to  restart with command prompt

[alex]

see
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=354.0

example

linld image=c:\bzimage initrd=c:\tinycore.gz "cl=quiet vga=788 waitusb=5"

regards,
alex

[gerits]

Even this doesn't work.. I've tried 1.4 and 2.0
still getting the black screen...

[roberts]

Some older notebooks require the framebuffer extension.
See: http://www.tinycorelinux.com/faq.html#framebuffer

[gwalther]

You need to use as clean as possible dos boot

Saw this comment on another site re: loadlin

"You cannot use HIMEM.SYS (linux won't mount root on /dev/ram)"

http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install

[gerits]

What do you mean with himem.sys?

[gwalther]

It's been a long time since dos days, but as I remember it, it  is a memory manager that is sometimes
either in config.sys or autoexec.bat.

[gerits]

I've found the himem.sys in the config.sys file and commented it, but it still gives a black screen no matter what I do...

When I use the linld I get some errors saying hard disk read error, could this be a cause?

I really want this to work, this is the fastest and still nice looking and great working linux distribution I've seen so far...

[gwalther]

Her's how I got mine working;
1.  made a  dir named tiny
2. put linld097.com....bzImage...and tinycore.gz....in it
3.shutdown...reboot to safemode command prompt (press F8 during boot proces)
4.cd tiny...then...
linld097 image=bzImage initrd=tinycore.gz cl=xsetup

...that's it...took awhile...lots of output..then it asked for video mode...mouse type...and it opened a desktop.

note...I could not get version 2 to work only 1.4...I got kernel panic with v2

good luck

[gerits]

tried this one to, but also didn't work...

[roberts]

TC v2 works fine with linld.com v0.97
I am currently setting up and old sony laptop for a friend using linld.

I would suggest to try not starting X.
Depending on where you have the two files copied...
linld image=c:\bzimage initrd=c:\tinycore.gz "cl=quiet text"

See if you can boot to a text prompt.

BTW  loadlin.exe is not linld.com

[gerits]

Because none of this was working I'm going to try something new... I'm going to install TC in vmware and then copy it to my hard disk... If I'm correct this should work...

[gerits]

With help from this topic I cot it up and running:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=1923.0