by I have a laptop whose internal CD-ROM drive does not like to read
CD-Rs. This problem makes it somewhat difficult to do a Linux install.
I have an Adaptec 1460c pcmcia SCSI card, however, connected to an HP
m840e external SCSI CD-R. I am able to boot from a floppy and install
RedHat 7.3 without any problems from the SCSI CD-R. RedHat uses two
floppies to do this: one loads the kernel and interface and the other
floppy loads the drivers.
I have tried to do the same thing with Mandrake 8.2 without success. I
have attempted to boot from the pcmcia, cd-rom, network, and "other"
floppy images provided on the install CD-ROM. None of them allow me to
have access to the SCSI CD-R. The pcmcia boot floppy presents the
option for loading the aha_152x driver, but selecting it does nothing.
I rather like Mandrake and would like to get it installed instead of
RedHat. Is there an easy way to accomplish this without having to
compile a new custom kernel and edit a million configuration files? I
have this dream of only spending a few days getting this thing working
instead of a few weeks.
TIA,
-Jeremy