boot from floppy, toss to usb drive or pcmcia cd reader?

[dep]

i'm trying to install kubuntu on a notebook that does have the horsepower to run it, albeit not optimally, but that does not boot from either CD or USB. the CD is a pcmcia device, so any floppy boot would of necessity require inclusion of that subsystem plus drivers. i am wondering, though, if there is not some way to alter the boot floppy -- which currently goes through a litany of possible CD readers, none of which i have -- to instead look at the USB drive, onto which i would then put either the .iso or its contents, so as to install from there.

some distributions allow this kind of thing; i was surprised that kubuntu doesn't seem to. might it be as simple as a chroot command, followed by some command (what?) that starts the install?

useful suggestions greatly appreciated.

[Snowhog]

Re: boot from floppy, toss to usb drive or pcmcia cd reader?

Qqmike's post on this may be useful to you:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081748.0

[dep]

Re: boot from floppy, toss to usb drive or pcmcia cd reader?

it is a good and competent post, but it ultimately requires an ability to boot from the usb drive, which is the problem -- the bios will not allow this, nor will it allow booting from the pcmcia cd reader. the smart boot diskette does much of the work -- but it then wants to throw things to one of a half-dozen cd readers, of which mine is not one. if there were an option to select the usb drive, problem would be solved. if there were an option to select a pcmcia cd reader, problem would be solved, though this would involve loading the boot diskette down with a world of kernel drivers -- i think that usb storage is cleaner and simpler.

there is an option to go to a command prompt, and i was hoping that there might be a way there to go to the usb drive so as to install from it.

what i basically need to do is boot from floppy to load the kernel, make a ram drive, and go to usb instead of cd to then do the install.

i do not know if i've explained this clearly or not. hope it came through, though