Best LiveCD for a Older laptop with NO Hard Drive

[XT_]

Hello All

I need your help. This is also my 1st post so be gentle

I have a older Fujitsu 270DX laptop. It has a Intel 200 Mhz MMX™ Processor, and has been upgraded from 32 to 64 megs of ram. The flimsy ribbon cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard snapped, and left me with no hard drive whatsoever.

Anyhow, Untill I can find a replacement cable for this (good luck), could somebody tell me the best Livecd linux distro i could use with this machine that I can use with no hard drive.

All I want this laptop to do is surf the web, use gaim, or whatnot, and maybe a little word processing. not much else, which is pretty much doing when I HAD a hard drive. Anyhow, I tried the Beatrix Live cd, and it the laptop just will not work with it. Since i have little ram and no hard drive, it takes 20 minutes to boot to "the kitty" and then it pretty much just sits there....

So, I guess I need 2 things..

1. A livecd distro that runs fully in ram, and in this case, fully in 64 megs or less on my little pentium 200

2. has a web browser, irc/chat client and gen word processor.

Thanks in advance!

Chris

[carlosponti]

probably your best bet will be DSL(Damn Small Linux) but distro choice is a personal thing mostly.

[XT_]

probably your best bet will be DSL(Damn Small Linux) but distro choice is a personal thing mostly.

Thanks for responding

I have been considering trying DSL. While searching on the web about this issue, I ran across this.

http://www.livecdnews.com/2005/06/15...pular-livecds/

So, a K6 based laptop with 64 megs of ram and NO hard drive ran DSL.

I'm going to have to download DSL and try it out!

[bigtomrodney]

I think DSL is your only man, unless you want to try Puppy. I like Puppy but it really tries too much to look like Windows imho. All LiveCDs run in ram, though many will use swap if they find it, so really the only trick should be trying to find one with low enough requirements. Also remember to use nothing higher than i586, as i686 is compiled for Pentium 4.

[XT_]

Thanks guys I'm going to try DSL tonight.

I'll post the results here..

[cuiq]

You may also want to check out this site for the broken ribbon.

http://www.impactcomputers.com/fujitsuparts.html


Peace V :my friends:

[carlosponti]

i bought a CPU cooling fan unit from them for my wifes dell i can vouch for them being a good company.

[XT_]

You may also want to check out this site for the broken ribbon.

http://www.impactcomputers.com/fujitsuparts.html


Peace V :my friends:

I checked out the site, but they dont have parts for my old D series 270DX

I called Fujitsu, and after registering with them, they told me they dont sell the cable.

[XT_]

**Update**

DSL worked!!

I'm typing this on the laptop right now

Untill I get a hard drive cable, and can install a distro of linux to the HDD, this will do the trick!

BTW, I found a 256 meg usb key hiding in my junk drawer. My pc cannot boot a USB key, but I was wondering if I could use it as a swap partition for DSL in lieu of a hard drive. It would also be nice to use it to save configs and bookmarks in the browser, among other things.

Any ideas?

Thank you!!