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Linux Laptop w/ 3.5" Disk, USB, and No Hard Drive?
ryewell asks: "I have an IBM Thinkpad 390 Laptop, PII 266Mhz, 128 MB RAM, with USB 1.0 port and a 3.5 floppy drive being the most important stats I would assume for this question. So my hard drive died, and I've been using a DOS boot disk and a program called Mel to do my word processing.Would it be possible to boot the laptop in Linux using a 3.5 disk, then using drivers access the USB memory stick that had an adequate Linux system on it?" With USB thumb drives getting to be as large as 512 megs, memory sticks weighing in at 1 gig, and Compact Flash cards getting into the 2 gig range, this might not be such a bad idea. There's the Linux Mobile System that looks to implement something like this, but are there other distributions or similar projects that might be of interest? If you were going to put together a custom system for something like this, how would you do it?
"If Linux can be configured this way, I would need no hard drive, and the created docs/info could be saved on the USB drive memory stick. This way, no hard drive means no moving parts, which means better battery life, and I won't have to buy a hard drive which at the best deal I can find is about $130 US after taxes, shipping, etc. And how cool would it be to run a laptop off of a memory stick! Unfortunately, I know nothing about Linux, but this might be a cool problem to solve for those smart and knowledgeable enough to figure it out. Thanks for any help you can provide!"
I would use a CF card and ATA adapter.
I would also keep in mind that write times for CF devices can be ...g...l...a...c...i...a...l compared to disk.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
http://www.toms.net/rb/
Small Linux should have everything you need, on two floppies, to mount a USB filesystem. If not, it is simply the matter of compiling a kernel and sticking it on one of the floppies. Good luck with your project!
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
and buy a new bloody hard disk. it would be far cheaper to buy a new laptop hard disk, than a 512M of usb storage. christ.
If your BIOS will support it, why not remove the floppy from the equation and boot directly from the memory card/key/stick/whatever? A 1 GB key would allow for a Knoppix install and a good bit of data, and then you're word processing with Open Office.
Isaiah 43:19 (NCV)
Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don't you see it?
PUPPY Linux http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm
allows you to boot off a usb card and does not require a hard drive. Damn small linux and dynebolic are two other distros that work well with underpowered hardware and don't require harddrives but they both require cd drives.
http://nyamenation.org/
As other people are constantly pointing out whenever somebody posts an idea like this, "non-volatile" memory like MemorySticks and CompactFlash has a limited lifespan. It wears out after a certain number of erase/write cycles. That actual number is probably in the hundreds of thousands, but if you've got a Linux swap partition on there you'll be pounding the silicon pretty hard. Add to that a floppy disc as your boot partition, and ... well ... this sounds like one of the more head-scratchingly silly ideas I've heard in a while.
Breakfast served all day!
...is a Debian boot floopy. Custom-compile a kernel that supports your USB or Memory Stick/Compact Flash/Whatever devices, put it on the floppy. Format the external media so that linux can read it (and it may already be able to, so the choice to format may come down to performance).
Make a short script to mount the external media on boot up, and install everything you need from there.
Obviously, having another computer running a BSD or Linux distro will greatly help you achieve this.
Don't be surprised if the fruits of your labor yield a very fast graphical linux box.
I have an older 400mhz Dell notebook. I am currently using a CF to IDE adapter in it.
:)
http://store.ituner.com/ituner/emstcfl.html
It works great, i am using a 256 meg sandisk compact flash card and feather linux.
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/
Overall the performance is not too bad. Battery life is MUCH better without the hard drive. Write speed is not too great, but since I usually ssh into my server and leech from there, i dont need to worry about that much...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
There have been many projects over the years to run Linux on just one floppy disc and within other very tight space/memory requirements.
/ /www.fdlinux.com/
Some examples of Linux distros that do this are:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/byld
http:
But I really think you are looking for this:
http://linuxmobile.sourceforge.net/
Linux Mobile System (LMS) is a full Linux system whose support is the new USB Flash Memory Drives. The intention is to boot any PC with USB support with our system and therefore we will have every administration and analysis applications that we have selected, so we will not need install it. This way, always we will be able to get our Linux system ready to use in our pocket.
Now if you cannot boot the laptop with the USB connection I am sure you can use a mini/micro distrobution to boot the system with USB support and then have it read and run off the USB drive.
I hope this information is helpful in your quest. =P
Push harder towards Open Media/Content
VKh
I don't know why noone has said this yet, but why not stick a copy of Knoppix in one partition on a large USB keychain device and boot it using a floppy with a boot manager on it? Then use the other partition on the keychain device for data storage.
Booting Knoppix will eliminate the need for massive amounts of read/write, and you'd still have a bit of space to store whatever it is you are working on.
Is anyone building one of these things as a Proof of Concept? I understand that memory uses more battery juice than the HDD itself.
I think my ideas below and my question above come from my curiosity of how long the portable/hand-held DVD players last. I also wonder how long MP3 device batteries last. Days? Aside from the LCD and CPU chewing up maybe 60% of the battery life, at LEAST the storage and boot and system file devices could be on CF/Smart Media. Maybe someone might want to take the LSB to a new level: Optimizing the installation and locating of system files based on the type of medium to which the OS and user files are being written during install. And, suspend-to-disk, ACPI, and APM problems could be made to go away to a good extent, probably because the disk spinning is eliminated. i am not sure about communicating devices (modems and NICs), tho.
Imagine this:
-- Multi-slot CF/Smart-Media bay
-- O/S Memory sticks/ in each CF/SM bay
-- Energy-efficient/Solar or ambient-light-powered LCD
-- Ability to swap O/S on the fly
-- IR or compatible/comparable input device with own power supply (like the battery-powered Logitech mice...)
Can't laptops go Solid State now? I imagine much of the laptop industry is sustained by momentum to keep cranking out mechanical disks. If an efficient CF/SM platter or storage surface can be optically read by something that is not having to spin at some 7,000 or 10,000 RPM, a lot of other savings might be made.
Also, it seems laptop boards have fewer and fewer soldered components. Further reductions should lead to greater opportunity to bring solid-state laptops to consumer hands. If the OS could be on one the disk, and be swappable, the data on another swappable, disk, then when will a light switch on to make solid-state laptops that hold VMWare or Win4Lin in a Linux environment? VMWare and NeTraverse could then reduce their costs of product just by jumping to distribution/deployment of millions vice 10s of thousands. This would probably devastate ms' foothold, especially of XUL or XML or other code and W3C standards were followed better.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
DSL has been doing this since at least 0.6.x. See: DSL USB + Floppy ~ 50 Mg and change the /dev/hda3 entries to /dev/sdaX, whatever your USB block device is recognized as. From damnsmalllinux.org, see the save settings to HD, and again use the USB instead. Rather amazing what they include on just 50 megs, and all apps are light weight enough you may actually get some work done.