Laptop tinkering

[stack]

I mentioned at the last meeting that I have a side project of getting Linux on a few Ricoh NP-50 laptops and a Toshiba Liberetto 110CT. Several people commented on the difficulty as they have no CDrom drive and only floppy disc's. Parallel floppy discs. They do have PCMCIA slots and I do have 2 PCMCIA wireless network cards, however, I can't tell if they are busted or don't have the right drivers for Linux.

Anyway, this has been a side project for when I get bored. I literally have worked on these for maybe 5 hours in the past 2 months. But, if there really are people interested in tinkering with them then I will bring them to the next meeting and let people mess about with them all they like. Just bring floppies. Cause I only have 1 (one!). I started out with a bunch more in the back of the closet, but only one of them seems to work. I guess that technology really is dying...

Have fun!
~Stack~

[maczimus]

oh are these the ones we were talking about at lunch last time!? cool....would like to see these...

[stack]

Yup! The very same.

[maczimus]

do they have USB? or is it only USB floppy? as we could maybe boot puppy linux from a flash drive...

[bboyer]

I have a USB floppy for a Dell that may work. I think I have a parallel cable and housing for a CD-ROM off another Dell. Also have a host of wireless cards that work well under current Linux kernels. I can drag that crap to the meeting if you want to play with it. Do the units have a NIC, and if so do they support a boot from network option?

[stack]

They do have USB 1.1. I have been unsuccessful in booting off of USB (of course, I could be doing it wrong but a lot of older system just don't support it).
They also have parallel floppy controllers.

They have PCMCIA slots, but no network cards. If you have a few that you are willing to bring, I would love to borrow them to get an install on. If I could get a few floppy discs and a network connection, I know that I could do a net-install of Debian.

Thanks!

[rasav]

Think about using a cf to mini IDE adapter? On tablet type appliances, Hitachi Visionplates in particular, they used a cf card in an adapter to take the place of a harddisk.

...just thinking out loud, sorry.

[stack]

Thanks for the suggestion. I did try this and the MB doesn't recognize the drive.
The CF card works in other systems, just not in this older laptop.