fangorn

For now, I was going to use a wired connection. I went ahead and used a NIC from work (it's a 3com Megahertz 3cx-?). When I use the Mandrake Control Center, it sees this pcmcia correctly. Then I do an ifconfig and all I get is the "lo" interface (loopback). I do not get an eth0 even though I've gone through the network wizard in MCC and it says "configuring eth0". When I do an ifup eth0, I get the message "device or resource busy". So then I do a dmesg and I see the messages "eth0: could not reserve IRQ 0". I even went into the /etc/pcmcia/network config file and put "exclude irq 0" in line with the other excludes. How can I tell this PCMCIA driver to load on a different irq?

For now, I was going to use a wired connection. I went ahead and used a NIC from work (it's a 3com Megahertz 3cx-?). When I use the Mandrake Control Center, it sees this pcmcia correctly. Then I do an ifconfig and all I get is the "lo" interface (loopback). I do not get an eth0 even though I've gone through the network wizard in MCC and it says "configuring eth0". When I do an ifup eth0, I get the message "device or resource busy". So then I do a dmesg and I see the messages "eth0: could not reserve IRQ 0". I even went into the /etc/pcmcia/network config file and put "exclude irq 0" in line with the other excludes. How can I tell this PCMCIA driver to load on a different irq?

Thanks Dan! Downloaded those 2 iso's, burned the CD's at 4x. Used the 2nd CD to boot from. Got the "this is not an installation disk" message like you said. Now, I'm installing Mandrake Linux 9.0. Thanks alot for all your help. How can I find out which PCMCIA NICs will work with this install and this hardware?

Alright, here are my findings: The CDs I burned were burned at 8x. I tried booting with the 2nd disc. I didn't get the message that says "this is not an install disk". I tried booting from both the first CD and the second CD, both got me to the point where it prints out the hda: messages and then starts the setup and I hit enter to install or upgrade and it then says "searching for cdrom (cd-38e)" - it even knows what kind of cdrom it's looking for. I listened each time and can confirm that when it is searching for the CDrom, the CD spins up, but then spins down and ~20 seconds later a message appears saying "I cannot find a mandrake linux install cd". So then I burned disc 1 and 2 at 4x speed and got the same results. So then I looked online somemore and found a suggestion to hit F1 to go into options (when the second CD goes to setup) and hit alt1 to load kernel 2.4 instead of 2.6. I tried this with the same results I've been seeing. I'm so close though. When I look at the kernel messages I see: <4>hdc: ATAPI 8x CD-ROM drive, 128kB cache, DMA So then I get the idea (which may be what you were getting at danleff and I'm just dense) to boot with CD2, but when it asks "install from cdrom"; I changed the cd to CD1 before hitting enter. This still didn't work. I don't know what else to do. Is anyone familiar with MandrakeMove? Would this give me what I need (just a browser connected to the network)? Any other suggestions for this laptop? Does anyone know of a laptop that is known to work with Mandrake and maybe is a few years old so it's not too expensive?

Hey, thanks danleff. This CD writer I'm using is several years old. I'm pretty sure the CDs were burned at 12x and the CDs are cdr. I will burn them again at 8x or slower and see what happens. I'll post back either way. Thanks!

Well. I made an install floppy, put the floppy and the CD in their drives and rebooted the machine. The floppy did boot and the mandrake install started, but it can't recognize the CDROM. I'm not sure what to do. It asks me if I have an Additional Drivers floppy, but I don't. I'll have to see if this CDROM has a linux driver, but tracking that down and then what if it does, I don't know. We'll see what happens.

I don't have this laptop on the network yet. So I will be buying a pcmcia NIC. It will be a cable internet connection, pcmcia card using a router. Should I get this working with Win95 before I load linux? I'll keep links-graphic in mind, thanks dan. I did try to load Mandrake last night. When I'm in Win95 and try to run CD1, it brings up the setup screen, but when I hit install Mandrake, it prompts me to hit OK to reboot and when I click the button - nothing happens. So then I changed my boot sequence and booted from the CD. After loading the BIOS and then trying to read the CD, the loading hangs. So tonight I'm going to try loading from floppy. Hopefully making the boot floppy is easy.

Quote: I recommend using ext3 or reiserfs as your file system. So I guess that will be an option during the setup. Hardware, I guess you mean externals? I will have a mouse, but I hope to use the laptop screen and keyboard. This is my optimal hope. Mandrake was suggested to me for the reason you stated - I can load a minimal "custom" setup. And in this case, I really only need a web browser...and ethernet too. So should I format the drive and just wipe it out? As you say, I'll learn alot, but I really don't want to keep win95 around. I've heard so much about Linux being more secure and seeing as how the main point of this machine will be a web browser, I don't want Microsoft security hassles - on an obselete OS no less! If this goes well (no reason to think it won't), my goal is to set up a linux web server. I have a Win2k web server at work running apache, but would rather run Linux. Thanks for you reply!

I'm a Linux virgin, but a computer programmer, so I like to think I'll figure this out. I have a Fujitsu Lifebook 635T from college that has Windows 95 on it. I'd like to use this computer as a web station in my kitchen. Don't want to bother with Win95 anymore, so it was suggested to me to load Mandrake Linux. I've downloaded and made CDs of Mandrake 10. My questions are: I don't wish to keep anything on the drive. Do I format the drive first (it's a 1.35 GB, 1 partition drive)? Or do I just let the Linux setup boot from the CD and go for it? Any words of caution or advice? I've read several laptop linux load articles, but these didn't really answer my fear of the unknown, heh. Suffice it to say, I'm prepared to lose the computer. So may the force be with me....