Fort Worth Linux Users Group Discussion Board

I mentioned at the last meeting that I have a side project of getting Linux on a few Ricoh NP-50 laptops and a Toshiba Liberetto 110CT. Several people commented on the difficulty as they have no CDrom drive and only floppy disc's. Parallel floppy discs. They do have PCMCIA slots and I do have 2 PCMCIA wireless network cards, however, I can't tell if they are busted or don't have the right drivers for Linux.

Anyway, this has been a side project for when I get bored. I literally have worked on these for maybe 5 hours in the past 2 months. But, if there really are people interested in tinkering with them then I will bring them to the next meeting and let people mess about with them all they like. Just bring floppies. Cause I only have 1 (one!). I started out with a bunch more in the back of the closet, but only one of them seems to work. I guess that technology really is dying...

Have fun!
~Stack~

oh are these the ones we were talking about at lunch last time!? cool....would like to see these...

Yup! The very same.

do they have USB? or is it only USB floppy? as we could maybe boot puppy linux from a flash drive...

I have a USB floppy for a Dell that may work. I think I have a parallel cable and housing for a CD-ROM off another Dell. Also have a host of wireless cards that work well under current Linux kernels. I can drag that crap to the meeting if you want to play with it. Do the units have a NIC, and if so do they support a boot from network option?

They do have USB 1.1. I have been unsuccessful in booting off of USB (of course, I could be doing it wrong but a lot of older system just don't support it).
They also have parallel floppy controllers.

They have PCMCIA slots, but no network cards. If you have a few that you are willing to bring, I would love to borrow them to get an install on. If I could get a few floppy discs and a network connection, I know that I could do a net-install of Debian.

Thanks!

Think about using a cf to mini IDE adapter? On tablet type appliances, Hitachi Visionplates in particular, they used a cf card in an adapter to take the place of a harddisk.

...just thinking out loud, sorry.

Thanks for the suggestion. I did try this and the MB doesn't recognize the drive.
The CF card works in other systems, just not in this older laptop.