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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/20/19 2:26 AM, Rick Moen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190220102634.GZ10019@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Quoting Bobbie Sellers (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com">bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com</a>):
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> He also brought in several copies of PLOP a boot manager for
older machines that lets you boot from USB or CD for machines
with old BIOSes that have no updates available.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
My recollection is that the most winning feature of Plop Boot Manager
is its ability to... I'll have to invent a word, here... cross-boot
from pretty much any bootable device to another device that would not
ordinarily be bootable.
Let's say that you have a Pentium II machine whose BIOS is so antique
that it allows the admin to boot from only
1. the floppy drives or
2. a drive connected to one of the four PATA ('IDE') connectors
Let's say the Pentium II PC has one or two USB ports, but those cannot
be selected as a bootable device in the BIOS or the startup screens.
You'd like to boot it from a nice little USB flash drive, but the PC
refuses to boot from there -- frustrating. Plop Boot Manager provides a
solution, because you can install it to your choice of a floppy disk or
to the boot sector of a PATA hard drive, and configure its boot
configuration to branch from there to the USB device upon startup.
Plop Boot Manager is really flexible in where it'll operate from and
what it'll cooperate with. Docs:
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/startmodes.html"><https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/startmodes.html></a>
It's called 'Plop', as are several related projects such as the Plop
Linux distribution, because 'Plop' is the name of author Elmar
Hanlhofer's company in Austria.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> He also brought on the same sized disks SliTAZ 5-in-One release
both of these are adapted to old machines with low memory.
Both are on the very compact CD-R format sometimes called
business card size
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Wow, everything old is new again.
Business-card sized CDs were all the rage at the first LinuxWorld Expo
and Conference in San Jose (1999), because my friends and I at Linuxcare
made them famous with the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card, progenitor
of the LNX-BBC micro-distribution (from which Klaus Knopper learned the
pivot-root trick that he used to create Knoppix, the first popular
live-CD full-sized distribution.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card#History">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootable_business_card#History</a></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I remember those well. I have a copy(somewhere) but I am not
sure it is functional.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190220102634.GZ10019@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Business card CDs are fun, but they have a couple of severe problems.
1. They hold only 50MB before compression, around twice that with
compression.
2. Like other optical disks, they're fragile. Back then, I
cracked a couple before I learned that, no, you cannot keep
one in your wallet, and, curse it, they're just a tiny bit
too tall to store in one of those metal boxes that mints come in.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I can haul them along in a handbag or in a tote-able computer
case. <br>
These are fragile and a case to protect them would be nice but
otherwise<br>
they are wrapped in paper secured with a rubber band.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190220102634.GZ10019@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Over the twenty years since then, also, we've gotten BIOSes that
are able to boot from USB and USB-type flash drives to use for that
purpose -- so I'd say there's vanishingly little practical use for
the business-card CD format.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well the donor likes to keep old machines operating and
doubtless <br>
finds use for it. If anyone else is interested they can request a
copy of<br>
either PLOP or Slitaz and I will have it at the next meeting. If
the business<br>
card sized CD run out I imagine we can get it on regular CD or on a
<br>
flash drive if appropriate.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190220102634.GZ10019@linuxmafia.com">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> About 6:10 PM Joseph P. came in to return a disk and I was able to copy
several files to digital media for him to use, Rescatux was one, and
that is because SystemRescue CD has left the 32 bit machines behind.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
SystemRescueCD 6.0.1 has left i386 behind, _but_ SystemRecueCD 5.3.2
is still there and I would encourage you to snarf and keep a copy
_specifically_ for its 32-bit support.</pre>
</blockquote>
No worry I am a collector and keep all sorts of things around<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="file:///media/Portable">file:///media/Portable</a>
1/ISOs/SystemRescueCDLive/systemrescuecd-x86-5.3.2.iso<br>
<br>
But rescatux-0.51b3.iso works on 32 and 64 bit machines and Joseph
needed<br>
a copy to a flash drive as that is the inputs he has on his machine
which is<br>
small and Intel Atom powered.<br>
<br>
And Slitaz 5 works on i5/i7 machines if you really want to cut down
on<br>
the size of your distribution. I did not manage to get it online on
WiFi<br>
though. Maybe it needed an update but that will take a wired
connecton<br>
I believe.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190220102634.GZ10019@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Normally, one could raise the objection to the _prior_ release of a
Linux distribution that it 's going to be left behind by newer hardware
-- but all i386 hardware is pretty ancient, so that is no problem.
</pre>
</blockquote>
There will be quite a few 386 machines out there being used
by poorer people <br>
than we are in places where a hardware update has never been written
into budgets.<br>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> Bobbie Sellers
</pre>
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