I had an email from a reader asking about the boot process for SlackFTP and it had been so long since I ran it, I forgot! So I decided to run it again to make a more detailed write-down of the process. Several things occurred to me.
1. Even though I used a university-registered PCMCIA NIC, and the program could detect the card and mount the FTP drive, the packages downloaded were 85% corrupted.
HOWEVER, should I place the laptop on our workbench(which exists as a subnet of the university for containment purposes) and run it from there(during off hours), I could download and install Slackware 9.1 with no issue.
2. Whoever made this laptop had tiny, tiny, tiny hands. One of my co-workers gave me a 4GB notebook drive to replace the 2.1GB. I thought it would at most require me to pop off the top of the laptop and slide out the HD. Oh no..... Silly rabbit... I had to pull out the motherboard in order to unscrew the HD from the board and replace it with the 4GB Toshiba(the original is a Toshiba as well). It wasn't so bad up until I realized I had two extra pieces left over! Fortunately, they were just clips to hold up the back-end of the laptop, easily fixed. All this took the better part of the morning as I was on phone duty. I finally get it back together and turn it on to the BIOS.
YES!!! The BIOS detects it as a 4GB! Oh Happy Day! What? No OS? Well of course no OS, I haven't attached the floppy with the Slackware boot disk. What? No OS? Well the BIOS is set for A: then C: for boot priority. Let's check again... Mmm... yep, that's right. Then I boot it again and POST to the BIOS screen. The Drive's disappeared! I recheck the connections but I quickly came to the conclusion that I'm pretty much stuck with the drive I was given. Sad, but not so sad. I just don't look forward to unassembling this laptop again to replace the HD.
Once I get my tax refund, maybe I'll check on DealMac for a powerbook or IBook, who are made and QA'ed by ASUS. Hmmm....
Posted by Jeffrey at February 11, 2005 12:10 PM