Recent content by dr.quark

Nothing like that. Just three numbered lines: 1. HD 2. CD-ROM 3. Floppy You can navigate up and down with the arrow keys and can move the currently highlighted item up or down in the list. That's it. -- it has PhoenixBIOS 4.0 release 6.0 dated 2000 ----- The top...

Defeat. Crap. Plop 5 or 6 didn't work (they boot, but neither of them found the HD or USB). Moving on, right after I fix it with my hammer. Thanks, everyone, for all the help. It was definitely a learning experience.

Turns out when you are stupid and put a DVD in a CD-ROM drive, it won't work. Duh. So it works fine with the Debian ISO on CD. But the Debian install couldn't find the PCMCIA ethernet card, imagine that. I'll give it one more try with the PLOP boot manager and a full sized MINT 20 on USB. But...

Thanks. This laptop is worth saving (runs WinXp very nicely) and has a sharp, hi res screen. I'm just using it to run Processing to monitor a bunch of Arduinos that run all my house systems.

BTW, once I write to this 2.5" hard drive, I intend to install it as the native HD in the laptop, not boot from it externally.

I appreciate the ISO "copy" issue. Thanks. But another problem: the drive in the Sony is a CD-ROM drive, not a DVD. All the current Linux ISO files that I'm familiar with are around 1.6 GB. Hard to stuff that onto a CD-ROM. Obviously there are versions that fit on a CD, but the two old ones I...

I have two "bootable" Linux CDs from years ago. I tried both of them. One actually gets to the point of putting a message on the screen, but then bogs down in repetitive seeks. I just think they are either not readable or the CD drive is old and isn't tracking the disk properly. Maybe I should...

It's a Sony PCG-9202. In the BIOS the only selections for boot are HD, CD-ROM, or (wait for it) 3.5" floppy. How many of you have one just laying around (I do)? It has PhoenixBIOS 4.0 release 6.0 dated 2000

This old Sony laptop has a very sharp hi res screen, but the BIOS is so old it doesn't have a boot from USB option. I have dongle that allows me to connect IDE drives via the USB port. I was hoping that Rufus would see the IDE drive as a USB device, but no. Is there a way to make this external...