[lonesome_wolf2000]

I have a Compaq Presario Model 5170. It has a 10 GB hard drive, 128 MB ram, and a 350 mhz processor. I need to know if its possible for me to put linux on my hard drive. The computer came with a restore cd that resets the computer back to factory settings. That cd is like a disk image right? Is there anyway I can have it partition like half the drive so that I can slap Linux on my computer? And if I can, will my compaq devices be compatible with linux?


Here's a Device List:

Model 5170 Motherboard
On board video (3d rage LT pro)
On board sound (ES1869)
56k Rockwell Modem
On board ethernet adapter(DEC 21143)
Iomega 4X burner

[MikeV]

In theory, you should be able to install Linux and have everything working fine. Well, as long as the modem is not a Winmodem. You may have questionable video support, I'm not sure. Check http://www.xfree86.org for a current list of supported cards.

I would recommend against tryint to use the restore disk to partition your drive, cuz I doubt it will work. You'll have to either use FDISK to delete all your partitions, start over, and reinstall both windows and Linux, or, you can use whatever utility your distro comes with. Another option is partition magic, which rocks, but ain't cheap.

Let us know how you decide to go about it, and we can help ya out.

-M

[lonesome_wolf2000]

Okay, here's what I did.

Instead of putting both OS on the one drive, i went a scrounged up another hard drive. Here's what I did:

Used my restore CD to slap all my stuff on an 8 gig drive, having my original configuration

unplugged it

plugged in a fresh 10 gig with no partitions
installed Red Hat 7.1 on it.

Unplugged it

Set up drives in normal array as follows:
primary master - Win 8 GB HD
primary slave - CD Burner
Secondary master- CDROM
Secondary Slave - Linux 10 GB

I had to set this up like this because the cables wont run in any other manner. (i have no floppy drive in this computer) A hard drive sits at the top of the case above the cdroms, and a hard drive underneath, there is no other way to mount them. Believe me I tried.

Anyway, I fired up the machine. Windows 98 loads up, and i went into My Computer and all that it showed were the following drives:

A: Removable Storage C: 8 gb hard drive, CDROM

Why won't the computer see the other cdrom and the other hard drive? I've triple checked to make sure all cable connections are secure and that jumper settings are correct. Please Help.

P.S. I tried installing a boot manager called osl2000, but when it tried to load a menu at boot up, the computer would freeze, so i removed it.

[MikeV]

Windows isn't going to see your Linux partition, because it can't recognize the ext2 filesystem.

As far as the CDROM not being detected, I'm not totally sure what is causing this. Your setup sounds okay, though I'd probably have both cdroms as slaves, and both harddrives as masters. That should be easy, it's just switching jumpers.

-M

[lonesome_wolf2000]

I can't set the HD's up as masters, due to mounting restrictions in the case. How can I get the computer to come to a boot option when i turn it on? Like I said, I tried OSL2000, any other suggestions?

Also, I don't care if the hard drives can "see" each other. I just want them to both work together. Boot to one or the other at power up.