[syslinux] Problem booting older laptop

[Lonnie Mullenix]

On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:28:49 -0800
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:

> 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
> 
I certainly thank you for that link.  However, I could not get it to
compile and install correctly on my Gentoo Intel 2ghz system.  I did
grab the needed packages that they called for, but no joy.

So, I installed NetBSD.  The laptop seemed OK with those boot floppies
and since I had an old 1.4G drive laying around, I am now playing with
NetBSD.

Lonnie

-- 
Later,

Lonnie
Mostly Debian, but now
I'm messing around with
Gentoo.  Humm, I kind of
like it too.