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doodab replied

19 April 2013, 07:18
Originally posted by suityou01 View Post

I bet some smart alec has done a linux distro that runs off a floppy using some wacky compression algorithm thingy. If not it needs to be done.

You can certainly get a basic command line system on a floppy. In the olden days a distro came with various boot disk images (containing kernel, shell, basic utilities etc) and you picked one most likely to work on your hardware and put it on a floppy and booted it. This actually ran off the floppy disk as there generally wasn't enough ram for a ramdisk. The kernel image is still called zimage or vmlinuz cos its compressed.

These days you'd probably use a compressed disk image and unzip it to a ramdisk.
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bobspud replied

19 April 2013, 07:15
The closest to a whole OS on a disk these days is probably damn small linux DSL information it's really not bad for a sub 50mb image
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Contreras replied

19 April 2013, 06:22
Originally posted by suityou01 View Post

I bet some smart alec has done a linux distro that runs off a floppy using some wacky compression algorithm thingy. If not it needs to be done.

Yes there are/were plenty like that. tomsrtbt used to be a favourite. Not too wacky as the kernel is stored in a compressed format anyway so it's mainly a case of limiting the installed apps/tools/drivers etc to a bare minimum. Although not quite the same thing, SystemRescueCd is a modern variant that I have found useful to keep at hand, on an old 256MB USB stick.
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mudskipper replied

19 April 2013, 06:20
Originally posted by suityou01 View Post

Just been introduced to this site

You might laugh. Early in my career I was tasked with upgrading the site's 49 MicroVaxes. Each upgrade required 47 floppy disks.

Think I did about 10 before I spent the time to work out the minimum number of files needed to get the thing to boot and on the network from where I could load the rest, and got it down to about 6 floppies. One of my first forays into 'development' - RAMBO (R___ Automated MicroVax Backup Operation) was born!
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suityou01 replied

19 April 2013, 05:37
Originally posted by Scrag Meister View Post

<nostalgia>

Ahh, Sigh, The days when you could fit your entire OS on 1 floppy.

</nostalgia>

I bet some smart alec has done a linux distro that runs off a floppy using some wacky compression algorithm thingy. If not it needs to be done.
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Scrag Meister replied

19 April 2013, 05:32
<nostalgia>

Ahh, Sigh, The days when you could fit your entire OS on 1 floppy.

</nostalgia>
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suityou01 started a topic 9Gag.com

19 April 2013, 05:17
9Gag.com

Just been introduced to this site
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