Linux Laptop w/ 3.5" Disk, USB, and No Hard Drive? 396
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 not use MemoryStick (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I LOVE GOOGLE. (Score:5, Informative)
Small Linux (Score:5, Informative)
damn (Score:2, Informative)
Puppy Linux allows you to boot off of a usb card (Score:5, Informative)
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.
There is a more practical solution (Score:5, Informative)
Limited lifespan (Score:5, Informative)
Flash hard drive (Score:2, Informative)
Why bother with a USB memory stick when you get can CF card->IDE adaptors? Here's one outfit [acscontrol.com] that sells an adaptor that works for desktop computers.
I'm sure adaptors for laptop drives exist. If not, one could easily be built--it's a simple matter of changing the connector type, because CF cards have a built in IDE compatible interface!
Re:good point (Score:5, Informative)
In most cases it is easier to do if you already have a linux box to work with.
A really good place to start with would be http://www.8ung.at/spblinux/
Apparently this guy is using XDirectFB and a couple of floppies and you can have a full X running to surf the web. He has a USB versino somewhere on the site. In fact check out his usbboot setup.
Cake (Score:3, Informative)
Also when building the kernel try to minimize the number of modules you build. Build things into the bzimage if you have the option. But at the same time only include the bare minimum things necessary.
Lastly when you are building things with gcc be sure to use Os to optimize for size.
Since its an x86 system if the USB drive is supported by the kernel this shouldn't be difficult at all.
What about ZipSlack (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I LOVE GOOGLE. (Score:2, Informative)
I use a CF adapter in my notebook. (Score:5, Informative)
http://store.ituner.com/ituner/emstcfl.html [ituner.com]
It works great, i am using a 256 meg sandisk compact flash card and feather linux.
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ [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...
it's possible (Score:5, Informative)
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
Look at the different Linux Thin Clients (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why Bother? (Score:5, Informative)
One is dead silent, always on, network monitor (running tkined/scotty).
Another is my SMS/Voice gateway.
A third (which is actually a P90) is my wireless Mud client.
So don't say that slow old laptops are useless, just because you can't play the lastest games on 'em.
look harder? (Score:3, Informative)
not worth it (Score:3, Informative)
consider:
- your time
- the cost of USB/CF sticks
- the usability of the setup (slow)
all of it would add up to more than the $130 or whatever for the HD.
it would be just a case of hacking up your own custom kernel and mounting the USB stick.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:4, Informative)
I do this... occasionally (Score:4, Informative)
RUNT! (Score:2, Informative)
I saw this and I immediately thought of RUNT! [ncsu.edu]
It's an adaptation of ZipSlack designed to run off a USB memory key. Usually it needs the aid of a boot floppy to get things rolling, but theoretically it can be booted off the memory key alone on systems that support it. Few systems support USB booting properly, though, so I think you'll find you need the floppy.
Admittedly, it is designed for testing a machine's network connection more than anything, but it still has a fairly complete set of packages (basically anything ZipSlack has). If you want to customize, you can just trade off some of the packages in RUNT for the ones you want, or you can get ZipSlack and go from scratch. Using RUNT would be easier, though, since it's already properly configured for using the USB key.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why boot from floppy? (Score:3, Informative)
Regarding running Linux off Memory Cards (Score:5, Informative)
1. Memory Cards usually have a "number of write times" which is sometimes around 100,000 writes. This is much more than enough when you're using the card for saving photos, and a card could probably last you a lifetime for this purpose. However, when you put an operating system with a swap filesystem on it, which reads/writes tons of times constantly, 100,000 becomes very restrictive and you could easily damage the card in a month or so depending on ussage. NOTE however that not all cards are created equal, so do some research on this. Try searching for MTBF (mean time between failures) along with the type of card you're planning on using on google.
2. Although it is true many flash cards are slow compared to hard drives, some can be as fast or faster (depending on your system). For example, the SanDisk Ultra II CF cards have a *minimum* sustained write speed of 9 MB/s (that's MegaBytes per second, or aprox. 72 Megabits per second) which is VERY fast (however I do not know its MTBF specs). You can get such a 1GB card for about US$220. However, nowdays it is still MUCH cheaper to buy a hard drive.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:3, Informative)
Reading, not your strong point.
From the article:
"I won't have to buy a hard drive which at the best deal I can find is about $130 US"
The real reason to not want the hard drive (Score:5, Informative)
There are linux distros that will boot and run from CD-rom, but of course they access the noisy cd-rom all the time.
There are network based distros but they go so overboard, they want to get everything from the LAN, which is not so fast and slow to boot up.
In fact, in many cases the hard drive in the laptop is still there, it's just not perfectly silent.
I would like a distro which booted from hard drive (or CD-rom, or floppy) and after loading what it wanted, and mounting network filesystems, shut down the noisy boot device for good, or at least until some unusual activity called for it.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:5, Informative)
Searching for a deal, not the posters strong point.
I just recently bought a new 20GB laptop drive, 5400rpm, for $80. If you look on eBay, you can find them in the 2 - 4GB range for around $15 - $30.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:4, Informative)
A delimma faced many times (Score:3, Informative)
And they are so easy to use too...
Oh well.....A USB-CDROM boot option in the BIOS looks promising.
Re:Limited lifespan (Score:5, Informative)
Correct, and that is the main limitation of such devices. Just off the top of my head here, I can come up with an idea that just might work, but the OP had better be damn well prepared to use a very lightweight distro.
Step 1: Partition that USB drive. You're going to need a very small / partition, and a much larger /usr partition. These are not to be messed with. You'll also need a /home-flash partition large enough for your personal use, and of course, a backup plan for when that drive fails. /var. You can modify your init scripts to populate this directory safely. Symlink /tmp to /var/tmp, and now you've cut down a lot of your writes to your flash device. /home. Again, your init scripts can safely populate this with all your dot-files. Anything you definately want to save must be manually copied to the /home-flash partition. Optionally you can take a look at the scripts included with Slax [slax.org]. One script (IIRC configsave) will make a tar.gz of all those pertinant files and save them to a partition on a USB flash drive.
Step 2: Build your kernel. This can be tricky. Building a kernel that accesses the USB drive can't be that difficult, but you'll also need initrd support. Why? Well, because you've got 128 MB of RAM, and you certainly don't want to write to that flash drive all the time. Make a small, perhaps 32 MB initrd and mount it at
Step 3: Make yourself another 32MB initrd and mount it a
It should be noted that I don't know if the linux kernel can make and support multiple RAM drives at once. If not, just make one RAM drive, mount it a /var, and make /home a symlink to /var/home.
Re:damn (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:1, Informative)
It's actually a stolen thinkpad (Score:1, Informative)
That password is stored in an eeprom in the TP, and is also pushed into firmware on (many) IBM-qualified drives. So, you cant take a stolen drive and boot it either without that drives password in additon to any local boot password.
That is also why the poster doesn't just go out and buy a used drive for $15 off of ebay and slap it in... the drive would still be 'broken'.
So, the poster is hoping that we'll provide them with an alternative to make the thinkpad useable.
The answer is to use knoppix on a usb drive and be done with it.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:4, Informative)
microdrives etc (Score:4, Informative)
MPIO HS100 1.5GB HDD Portable Storage [mpio.com]
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:1, Informative)
Here's an actual useful answer for your query (Score:4, Informative)
One of the best resources I've found so far is over at damnsmalllinux.org (in the forum, here [damnsmalllinux.org] they have a pretty good how-to on this. I also found a really good discussion of it in the Gentoo forums somewhere, but I forgot to sync my firefox bookmarks today, so I don't have it.
For the project Im working on I can't use a hard drive, but Ive got heaps of memory - so Im just going to use ramdisk for swap space and stuff. That gets around the trashing your key thing. Probably not an option for an old lappy though! Good luck!
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:3, Informative)
Since CF Cards are pin compatible with IDE hard drives, and CF cards are currently the most durable (and cheapest) flash memory (even below USB Memory) I would put a CF card in the hard drive slot of the laptop...
The only problem is that flash memory is no good at writing (very slow) and so turn off swap and try to minimize writes to the disk (ie, don't run too many cron's etc..)
I think it is a waste of time and money to try to boot off floppy, and then load a system off a USB flash drive or CF card, because even with a 1GIG USB drive (or CF card) you will be paying about the same as a low end brand new hard drive for your laptop, and have very very slow performance, no swap, and limited life (600,000 writes per sector or something for flash memory is what i read somewhere)
So your salvage operation as you describe it sounds like it is going to cost you more, and give less performance, than a brand new hard drive with 1yr warranty slapped into there. Pricewatch has some new ones for pretty cheap. Even newegg.com has them for less than 100$ (and the cheapest 1GIG usb memory stick i have found is about 130$)
Your idea sounds good, and similar ideas have been done before in the linux firmware hacked routers.. where there is a very small amount of flash memory onboard but using a USB memory stick to load the rest of the system. But in your case, this isn't practical because its cheaper to go with a hard drive than a flash stick.
my 2c
Re:Puppy Linux allows you to boot off of a usb car (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Puppy Linux allows you to boot off of a usb car (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Junk on ebay (Score:4, Informative)
I use a Toshiba 486-100 machine with a wireless card in it to browse the web away from the machine room, i.e. on the back porch. It's a good little system.
Another one... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Probably Knoppix (Score:3, Informative)
I helped put together Jailbait. It's a nice distro, although a little out-dated (uses a test 2.4 kernel). I still have it installed on one of my iOpeners.
It has netscape 4, apache, ssh and mp321. It uses blackbox for WM and busybox for the apps.
It would definitely work as a test distro, and it will fit on even the smallest thumbdrives (it weighs in at 16 megs).
Damn Small Linux... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Junk on ebay (Score:3, Informative)
I would switch him but he ain't smart enough to use Linux, and to cheap to buy a Mac. Nope this guy gets second rate equipment only.
Flash cards have limits and problems (Score:1, Informative)
Feather Linux booted off of USB... here's how... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.northern.ca/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=
It uses freedos, I imagine if your lappy doesn't support booting from USB (and if freedos has USB drivers) you could boot via a floppy first and then start it up using the above.
So, you don't have to re-write the fs image often (Score:3, Informative)
The only hurdle I see to this is that you don't have any swap partition or file. Which is a bit of a drawback, but it should be perfectly possible to run a small linux distro with no swap.
As a case in point - Knoppix loads and runs off a CD - which generally you aren't going to be writing to at all once you've burned the Knoppix image on it. Actually, Knoppix might be an excellent starting point for the person trying to do this - Knoppix devs have already solved a lot of the problems of loading a Linux system from read-only media with no swap.
Actually, (Score:2, Informative)
I've got an even older thinkpad (486, no cdrom) and it gets at least 90 minutes from a charge. Possibly because it is so ancient it draws next to no power, I'm not quite sure.
Because I'm lazy and can't be bothered doing an NFS or HTTP install of some proper linux distro on it, I use basic linux [tuwien.ac.at], which is somewhat limited but can do a few basic things. There's a collection of these types of things available here [linuxlinks.com] if anyone is interested...
Several Options including Puppy (Score:3, Informative)
Puppy is designed to load itself into RAMdisk and not need to run from the boot media - I don't know for sure if that lets the hard drives or CDROM shut down, but you can probably tweak the Power Management utilities to make that happen. The LiveCD is about 50MB, so it won't take long to download.
Re:I would not use MemoryStick (Score:3, Informative)
RUNT Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Joel Ebel
http://www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt
Gentoo LiveStick (Score:2, Informative)
DamnSmall would work out (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mel? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you'd be interested in MS Word DOS 5.5 [microsoft.com], which MS is offering freely here. I think it was a Y2K upgrade. Very useful, eg if you want to print on a dot matrix, WinWord just can't use printer fonts, insists on using Truetype, which takes 4 times longer -- just save from WinWord as RTF, open in DOS Word, do some quick search-and replace on fonts, print.
But still, would like to know about "Mel".
Thinkpad Transnote (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a solution (Score:2, Informative)
Take a look at feather linux (Score:2, Informative)
feather linux [freshmeat.net]
Re:Mel? (Score:2, Informative)
I mailed to author of this arcticle. Mel is acronym from "Multi-Edit Lite" and it can be downloaded from Free DOS software page [att.net]. Unfortunatelly, it is simple text editor, not a word processor. (and it's shareware, not freeware) :(
As for free DOS word processors, there is thing called "GalaxyWrite". Still working download link are in an old FreeDOS newsitem [freedos.org]. It also mentions program called "AsEasyAs" - spreadsheet for DOS. Can't guarrantee anything, as I don't have tested them yet, but I hope this helps for somebody!