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DOS setup in order to run Linux

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by supz

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Hello. 2 days ago I got a IBM 486 machine (early 90's make, very old, big,obselete) with a pentium 33 motherboard in it. I also purchased a Pentium 90 motherboard cheaply to replace it if I wished to do so. As a person who has never built a computerfully before, or run Linux, this project is new to me. I was told in order to have Linux be able to run off of boot diskettes or the cdrom drive, the computer will need to have DOS. How exactly can I install DOS? I believe there are something like 7disks which make up DOS, but where can I aquire them and how would I make them run if the computer has no software? Insert the 1st disk in the A: and boot the pc up and follow instructions? I'm really not sure what to do..The Linux version I want torun is Mandrake 8.1, incase that has any impact on this installation. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

9 replies

by sgt_shultz

if you have access to another windows 98 computer, you can get going by making a windows98 startup disk, use that to boot on the homemake computer. or you could go to www.bootdisk.com and download a dos boot image to make your bootable cd. you don'tneed dos installed on the computer, just need to boot it on a floppy so you can get at the cdrom and run install...i assume you have mandrake on a cd? if you can get your motherboard to boot from the cd you are home free...that is the easiest way...i would visit the mandrake site and check out the minimum system requirements, as i remember it wants 32-64MB of RAM and quite a bit of hard disk space...before you start it would be good to know your video card model and have the specs for the monitor on hand (horizontal and vertical refresh rates) or use a plug and play monitor if you can then mandrake might be able to 'probe' it and set it up for you automatically...have fun...

by paulo.sedrez

You don't have to have to install DOS in order to install Linux. You just have to be able to boot the linux installer - from floppy or CD.

You said you just bought this machine, I suppose that it is not your only one. So you can use the other to create the boot disk - the instructions are on the CD. I am not used to Mandrake, but as a RedHat offspring it should be at the directory "images". Check the README file.

Once you have the boot floppy disk, just put it on the drive, put the CD 1 on its drive and boot up and follow the instructions.

You must take care with the hardware requirements. The latest installers require a lot more memory than that machines used to have - 32MB minimum, I think - and most of them no longer supports old non-IDE or non-SCSI CD drives - like early Sondblaster CD. They also require more disk then previous instalations - you brobably will not be able to install in a less then 400MB HD.

If the hardware requirements are more then what you have, you should consider the Slackware installation. The installer requires less memory (16MB, with an option for only 8MB), the are support for old proprietary CD drives and it can install a functional system in as less as 120MB.

--Sedrez

P.S.: Pentium33? The slowest Pentium I ever heard of. I thought they have started with Pentium 75, with an option for 50.

by gil_pangilinan

you don't need to have a dos if youre pc has an operating system like win98 and you have a cdrom and linux installer cd. you can boot on cd automatically the linux will automatically format your harddisk and install your linux software you have an option to install linux uisng gui or dos.

by woody

First: Mandrake is for i586 and up. You said this is a 486 but you called it a Pentium (586) and then also said the board speed was 33MHz. Based on my aging memory, Pentiums ran a minimum of 50Mhz board speed. (A P75 was 50 x 1.5, a 60 would be 60x 1, a 90 was 60 x 1.5 and so on). I lean towards this being a true 486 and thus Mandrake may not run on it as Mandrake has always been compiled for a 586 or better. You may have to fall back to RedHat or Debian, both of which are compiled for 386and better.

That said...
This sytem is obviously too old to boot off the CD directly, so on most Linux CDs are boot floppy images and the software to extract them. On RedHat (and Mandrake), look in the images on the first CD of the set for boot.img and the text file which will tell you how to get that image to a floppy. (Using another Windows computer, "rawrite boot.img a:" if I remember correctly.)

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