Author Topic: Arca media options  (Read 4902 times)

Rick Smith

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Arca media options
« on: January 12, 2021, 08:53:02 am »
Greetings,

I want to install arca on an old Fuji laptop that I think would be a good little machine for it.  Here’s the rub, it only has a cd not dvd drive, and the bios will not see usb 1.1 ports at boot.. do I have any options that you might suggest? Can I make multiple CD’s somehow or the install media? Is there a NetBoot cd option and install from network? Maybe make a small partition on HD a make shift boot image?

Any suggestions appreciated

Regards,

Rick

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2021, 03:26:24 pm »
I'm in the ArcaOS test group, and I tried to make a CD for cases like this. I ran out of patience to do the job.

There are two ways to go:

1. swap in a hard disk from a working system and fix config.sys.

or

2. Make a boot CD (use bootable? or eCS 1.2?) and restore a backup to the hard drive. The advantage to doing it this way is you don't have to use a screwdriver.
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Dave Yeo

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2021, 05:04:12 pm »
I haven't done it but others create a FAT partition and put the USB image there and install from it.
From readme2,
Quote
3.1.2  Using AOSBoot to create a bootable ArcaOS USB stick or partition

To build a bootable ArcaOS installation USB stick while booted to an existing
OS/2 or ArcaOS installation, you may utilize the AOSBoot script, located in the
\AOSBOOT directory of the ISO.

Detailed instructions for AOSBoot are included in the readme.txt file in the
\AOSBOOT directory of the ISO and available from the ArcaOS wiki (look for the
AltBoot sub-wiki).

So you would need an OS/2 install to start with.

Ian Manners

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2021, 06:19:43 pm »
I find Neils way faster, and less hair pulling but we all have our own ways of reaching the same end point sometimes. Depends on what you are use to, what you have access to, and how much time you have to try and learn :)

Connect a replacement HD to a desktop, boot from the DVD.
Select Management, Disk utilities, LVM and place a new partition(s) and volume(s) on the drive that is bootable, format said volume.
Then simply xcopy a working ArcaOS to your new drive
"xcopy c:\   e:\ /h/o/t/s/e/r/v"  <== where c: is your ArcoOS drive, and e: is your new HD [repeat if you use more than one partition].

Be aware that the boot drive needs to be 500G or smaller.
Cheers
Ian B Manners

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2021, 06:42:33 pm »
Hi

Sorry to jump almost out of the subject here. On old computers, I found it very useful to replace the hard drive of it with a "SD to IDE" card. Since it is an old computer and sometimes it will not support HDD bigger than 8GB, or 32GB, replacing the HDD with a SD card is very practical to clone the OS to the SD from another computer.  Also the SD card is a lot faster than the old HDD.

Of course it depends on how people want to use the old computer, some people like to have the original hardware and the same 90's experience of the old HDD.

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Martin Iturbide
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ivan

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2021, 08:22:33 pm »
Hi Rick,

Simple answer is to pull out the CD and replace it with a DVD.  I did that for a friend that wanted to use his old laptop as a media centre - if memory serves I think it was an old Fuji unit that had lost its battery but otherwise worked.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Arca media options
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2021, 10:45:37 pm »
Quote
Any suggestions appreciated

The easy fix, is to find a USB DVD drive, and use that, but that isn't going to work if you can't boot from USB (are you sure? check the BIOS carefully).

Years ago, I did create an eCS installer boot, on a CD drive, but that isn't as easy with ArcaOS, although it should work if you put the actual installer onto a USB stick (haven't tried it). Some major messing around would be required. I suspect that you would need to use the USB boot support, installed to a bootable CD, then put the actual installer (the ISO file) onto a USB stick. The initial boot (from CD) would need to load the boot stuff (to MEMDISK), and boot from it. After it boots, it will search for the ISO file (should find it on a USB stick), and mount that (in ISOFS) to do the actual install.

As Dave suggested, you can make a (slightly smaller than 2 GB) partition on the HDD, and follow the instructions. The "problem" with that is that you cannot prepare the drive, while you are booted from it. It can probably be done by booting DFSEE from a CD, then boot from the HDD.

Trying to replace a CD drive with a DVD drive, in a laptop, can be a real problem. They aren't all the same (physically), so you would need to find one that fits, and, from what I have seen, new DVD drives are expensive, and hard to find. Used are probably discarded for some reason. You probably also need an IDE DVD drive, which is even harder to find. Worse, it may have a proprietary interface, which probably doesn't exist for a DVD drive.

As suggested, connecting the drive to a system with a DVD drive (or boot support for a USB stick) is probably the answer. You may need a system that will support IDE, and figure out how to attach the power to the disk. I don't think it will allow you to install to a removable drive.

Another option, is to clone an existing boot drive to the HDD, using DFSEE. Again, you will need to find a way to attach the drive, so you can clone it.

Have fun...