réjean Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 (edited) Hi all! I got this message from a friend; need a workaround for an old dell 3200 which refuses to boot usb drives...optical drive doesn't recognize DVDRW's..hoping it will with R's when I get one.. He has Ubuntu on another machine so I am thinking of a iso that could be burnt on a CD. I do have tons of old distros I could give him. What would be a good one? Since I posted I received the following; thanx...but I will try a DVDR...some at Cape North... lots of events in this..for brothers pc at first..np installing..but machine has no memory..so wanted to do on old workhorse...which then I had to replace CMOS BATTERY TWICE..HELPS TO TAKE STICKER OFF FIRST Edited October 8, 2014 by réjean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 Anti-X, derived from Mepis/Debian specifically for old machines that won't boot modern distros. Fits on a CD-R. Your machine probably doesn't have a DVD-RW, maybe a DVD-ROM if you are lucky. Should boot from a CD-R. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 If it will boot from a CD-R, you could use an openSuSE network install, which when I installed 13.1 on an 11-year-old Dell only required an iso burned to the cd to start the install--all software is downloaded from SuSE's servers. You'd have to use xfce or ice wm on an old machine, but either works fine on my old Dell. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted October 8, 2014 Author Share Posted October 8, 2014 Good suggestion both. It sounds his DVD player seems to be working on and off so a net install would be better no doubt. I'll see what he has to say tomorrow. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 MX-14 would also be a good choice if it boots from CD. 696MB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 MX-14 would also be a good choice if it boots from CD. 696MB. I have seen a problem on several very old computers where MX-14 (and pretty much every other modern distro) would not boot. I will try to remember the message. It was definitely some aspect of the pre-loader or OS is not supported on the hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Here is a nice list of distros for older machines: http://distrowatch.c...y=Old Computers This one sounds fun Tiny Core Linux is a 12 MB graphical Linux desktop. It is based on a recent Linux kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, Fltk, and Flwm. The core runs entirely in memory and boots very quickly. The user has complete control over which applications and/or additional hardware to have supported, be it for a desktop, a nettop, an appliance or server; selectable from the project's online repository http://distrowatch.com/tinycore 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Here is a nice list of distros for older machines: http://distrowatch.c...y=Old Computers This one sounds fun [/background][/size][/font][/color] http://distrowatch.com/tinycore Fun is definitely what I would call TinyCore. It is a very interesting concept. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Gotta love the 2 second boot even in Vbox: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsalpha2 Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Sounds like he needs the Plop Boot Manager ...http://www.plop.at/e...r/download.html It is a small ISO that you burn to a CD and when you boot from it, it magically makes the computer be able to boot from the USB. If you are talking about the Dell with the Athlon 64 3200+, it should run most Linux distros ok if you can get a little extra RAM. I would recommend MX-14, just because I'm a huge Xfce fan and it works great on everything I've tried it on. Or SolydX, another good distro with Xfce. If he can change the battery, he should be able to blow the dust bunnies out and put a stick of RAM in. I had to replace CMOS BATTERY TWICE..HELPS TO TAKE STICKER OFF FIRST I always pop the battery out first, and then go, Which side was the top? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Don't know what the specs are on his old machine but a netinstall for Debian Xfce will fit on a CD no problem at all. Size around 280 MB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 Thanks everyone. I'll pass your suggestions along and hope he can get is machine (or his brother's) working. I'll definitely try Tiny Core this evening. It looks very cool. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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