[syslinux] Problem booting older laptop

[H. Peter Anvin]

Lonnie Mullenix wrote:
> I don't know if this is even the proper place for my issue, but since
> the boot floppies that I have downloaded are syslinux based.
> 
> I have a 97 vintage Hitachi laptop, and it won't boot newer CDs.  It
> will, however, boot a Debian 2.1 CD.  As we know, that version is quite
> old, and it booted off the second CD, not the first.
> 
> What I want/need to know, is there a reasonable way for a complete
> newbie to this sort of thing to build a bootable CD with a newer
> kernel, etc.
> 
> Thanks for any help you can provide.
> 

Your laptop has a broken implementation of the El Torito specification 
common in the late 90's; specifically, it only supports the floppy 
emulation mode, not the native mode (which ISOLINUX uses.)

The problem with this is that the floppy emulation mode is limited to 
2880K, which is limiting by now.

Your best bet is probably Smart Boot Manager:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

	-hpa