What program do you use to burn a Tiny Core ISO in a CD-R?

[Mauricio]

with respect to your success in reply #96, what happens when you add back in just the floppy drive? does it sound like it is trying to read a disk during the boot-up sequence?

It made that sound always when I turned it up. I plugged just the floppy drive and it did sounds (I don't know how a floppy disk reading sounds hahaha, I'm too young  ), it made one 'plop' and then like a sequence of three. I think also a light of the drive blinked.

[Mauricio]

In case the reboot in GRUB is due to faulty RAM causing a glitch, you could see if there's an option to disable "quick boot" or "fast memory self-test" or something similar in the BIOS settings. That would check the RAM more completely at start-up and possibly detect a failure that's missed during the default fast RAM test. Running Memtest86 would be better again, but that would need to be booted from a floppy or CD.

If there's more than one RAM stick installed, try booting with just one, then if it's the same try again with just the other stick.

I just found some options about the booting process. It was at QuickBoot mode (I changed it to FullBoot), also I enabled POST messages. Still, I gonna wait for gadget42's response before I assembly the machine.

Also, could be the QuickBoot that is preventing to the machine booting with Linux?

[Rich]

Hi Mauricio
QuickBoot bypasses the memory test to reduce the wait time
prior to booting.

[Mauricio]

...
I think I should buy a floppy disk sometime in the future and try the Plop Boot manager solution that CNK proposed.

in most regions there is usually _someone_ who has unused and unwanted computer stuff. that would give you additional possibilities for all sorts of parts/peripherals/etc.

Yep, for my luck, this is not my case hahaha. I never met someone who cared about old hardware, most people will dump it. I managed to save just one full PC from a side of a dumpster, is the one I used for installing the InstantCore image into the Pentium II HDD. I found like 2 cabinets with some mobos inside (with RAM sticks), I gotta buy a PSU and try those.

I envy you guys, there is all sort of vintage electronics in USA and people that care about them and keep them in good condition 

[Mauricio]

Hi Mauricio
On the chance that what you are trying to boot is too
new for your machine, try  TinyCore-4.7.7.iso  from here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/x86/release/
for the GUI version.

Or you can try  Core-4.7.7.iso  for a command line version.

Never thought about this. I assumed that the new TC releases were 'compatible' with hardware this old.

[Mauricio]

Hi Mauricio
QuickBoot bypasses the memory test to reduce the wait time
prior to booting.

Oh, okay. I thought it was something similar to Fast Boot that gave a lot of Linux users some trouble 

[gadget42]

getting more familiar with the bios is a good thing. i usually run the full-boot a few times to see the memory checks succeed and then switch back to quick-boot so it doesn't take as long to boot. you can plug the cd-rom drive back in and see if the bios gives you the option to make it the first-boot device. you should be aware that some motherboards of that era might not be able to boot from a cd-rom. in that case, the machine would boot from a system floppy and then load cd-rom driver(s) from the floppy for whichever optical drive is installed. hopefully that makes some sense. keep us posted!

[Mauricio]

getting more familiar with the bios is a good thing. i usually run the full-boot a few times to see the memory checks succeed and then switch back to quick-boot so it doesn't take as long to boot. you can plug the cd-rom drive back in and see if the bios gives you the option to make it the first-boot device. you should be aware that some motherboards of that era might not be able to boot from a cd-rom. in that case, the machine would boot from a system floppy and then load cd-rom driver(s) from the floppy for whichever optical drive is installed. hopefully that makes some sense. keep us posted!

I booted with the FullBoot option + POST enabled but I didn't notice a difference.

I actually moved at the beginning the CD drive boot to the first, and second the HDD.

[Mauricio]

I got some news.

After I re-assembled the machine (connected everything as it was) and booted, it showed the next screen:

Code: [Select]

131072 KB OK

The following configuration options were automatically updated:
 Disk 1:    4222 Mbytes
     If you are running Unix, you need to configure your system using the COMPAQ User Diagnostics diskette.

Thats the diskette asking message I was mentioning earlier on the topic.

Also, I created a bootable CD with Plop Boot Manager on it using wodim with the next arguments, and again, it won't boot:

Code: [Select]

speed=10 padsize=63s -pad -dao -v -eject

[CNK]

With it passing the memory test when "quick boot" is disabled, that makes it less likely that faulty RAM is the issue. Continuing with booting Plop Boot Manager from floppy or HDD is probably the next obvious step. Burning Plop BM to a CD was a pretty long shot because the idea is to use it as an alternative to the broken CD boot system of the BIOS, but I guess it was worth a try.

Other options would be to try installing TC to the HDD with Extlinux as the bootloader instead of GRUB. Or to install DOS on the HDD and use that to boot TC via Loadlin or install Plop BM on the HDD using its DOS installer program.

But I guess you won't be comfortable with the DOS option if floppies are from before your time. I'll say again that I have the same issue with a CD boot option that doesn't work on the mid-90s PC I'm posting from now, and booting to a Plop Boot Manager floppy then selecting the CDROM boot option from that works to boot TC from CD. Maybe ask older relatives if they've still got some old floppies deep in a dusty cupboard? That's how I got plenty of spares after they went out of use - I don't have friends into old computers either, I just benefit from people getting rid of 'junk'.

[Mauricio]

With it passing the memory test when "quick boot" is disabled, that makes it less likely that faulty RAM is the issue. Continuing with booting Plop Boot Manager from floppy or HDD is probably the next obvious step. Burning Plop BM to a CD was a pretty long shot because the idea is to use it as an alternative to the broken CD boot system of the BIOS, but I guess it was worth a try.

Other options would be to try installing TC to the HDD with Extlinux as the bootloader instead of GRUB. Or to install DOS on the HDD and use that to boot TC via Loadlin or install Plop BM on the HDD using its DOS installer program.

But I guess you won't be comfortable with the DOS option if floppies are from before your time. I'll say again that I have the same issue with a CD boot option that doesn't work on the mid-90s PC I'm posting from now, and booting to a Plop Boot Manager floppy then selecting the CDROM boot option from that works to boot TC from CD. Maybe ask older relatives if they've still got some old floppies deep in a dusty cupboard? That's how I got plenty of spares after they went out of use - I don't have friends into old computers either, I just benefit from people getting rid of 'junk'.

The next step will be booting from a floppy, for sure. From the beginning it sounded like the solution. I will see if I can get a floppy one of this days, maybe some older relatives have one as you said.
Just a little question, can my PC boot from the come common 1.44mb floppys? Or your PC only supports the 720kb ones?

[Rich]

Hi Mauricio
There's nothing in the bios that reports what size floppy drive was detected?

[CNK]

That PC will undoubtedly read 1.44MB floppies fine. Assuming it's a 3.5" drive, which is surely what the original would have been in a Pentium II PC, so I think it must be.

Of course if your goal is to boot the Live CD to test it out then install TC to the HDD if everything works, then manually installing TC on the HDD and maybe using an alternative bootloader to GRUB might to be a shortcut for that. Manually installing TC to HDD actually just requires formatting, copying a couple of files off the CD (vmlinuz and core.gz), then setting up the boot loader (which may be the tricky part).

[CentralWare]

@Mauricio: I'm just now coming into the conversation and have NOT completely read the entire thread, so forgive me if I ask questions which have already been answered.

• Do you have access to a "more recent" computer which can boot from USB?
• Do you have access to a USB to IDE/SATA adapter?
• Do you have access to a USB CD and/or DVD drive?
• Take one of the memory chips out of the Pentium II machine - if there's a sticker on it, what's the ID?
  (it'll usually begin with "PC" like PC100-something or just PCsomething, etc.)
• There's mention of a floppy drive; do you have KNOWN TO BE GOOD floppies to use in it?
• What country do you reside in?

With a vintage machine, you run VERY GOOD chances that the optical drive is filthy just from sitting around for the past two decades and may not read anything you put inside it.  The rubber belt that opens and closes the drawer is also VERY likely half-shot or worse, so DO NOT put in any CDs you cannot afford to lose and/or you must be willing to dissect the CD drive in order to get it out.  That said, if you want to resurrect the machine:

To "cheat" -- if you have a newer machine which you can connect the old hard drive to that CAN boot to USB and/or CD, disconnect its hard drive and connect the OLD one and just install Tiny Core using the newer machine.  You'll then be able to take the old drive, reinstall it into the P-II computer and you should be up and running, bypassing the need for CDs completely.  You will then want to test the USB ports to make sure you have at least one working port (they can oxidize in decades of not being used) -- if so, should you need extensions added to your install to get the remainder of the machine up and running (networking, etc.) you now have the means to do so.

A portable USB based CD/DVD drive tends to come in handy for older machines where their own optical drives either don't exist or don't function correctly.

An IDE/SATA adapter (also USB based) allows you to plug in a hard drive from an older machine into a newer machine without fuss.