Red Hat Boot Disks for PARIDE

 9, 8.0, 7.1, 6.2, 6.1

Installation disks and driver disks for these releases can be found at ftp://people.redhat.com/twaugh/backpack/redhat/.

 6.0

Bill Nottingham (notting@redhat.com) has put together a boot disk for Red Hat Linux 6.0 that supports the PARIDE drivers. Here is his announcement:

Installer boot images for Red Hat Linux 6.0 with parallel-port CD-ROM support are available at:

        ftp://people.redhat.com/notting/paride/
        http://people.redhat.com/notting/ftp/paride/
   

Warning: due to lack of hardware, these have undergone minimal testing, and should be considered alpha/beta-level, UNSUPPORTED install images.

To use, simply select Other CD-ROM when prompted for the CD-ROM type, and choose Parallel port CD-ROM.

Please note: these boot images are for local (non-network) install only. Support for older proprietary CD-ROM drives (Mitsumi, Sony CDU-31A, etc.) is not included, as if it's needed. Support for installing to paride media, using the pd or pf modules, is NOT included.

Please direct all questions about these images to linux-parport@torque.net, or me personally (notting@redhat.com).

 5.2

The Boot Disk supplied with RedHat 5.2 contains an old driver for the backpack CD-ROM which does not work with many current drives. To resolve this problem, and to support some of the other parallel port CD-ROM devices for the purpose of installing RedHat Linux, I (grant@torque.net) have prepared an alternate boot disk.

Please fetch

	http://cyberelk.net/tim/data/parport/rh52pp2.img
   

if you would like to install RedHat Linux using a parallel port CD-ROM based on one of the following adapters:

• DataStor Commuter CD-ROMs
• DataStor CD-ROMs using the EP2000 adapter
• Fidelity International TD-3000 based CD-ROM
• Freecom Power CD
• Freecom IQ cable based CD-ROMS
• Kingbyte KBIC 951A or KBIC 971A
• Microsolutions backpack
• CD-ROMs using the OnSpec 90c26
• Shuttle Technologies EPAT
• Shuttle Technologies EPIA

Most of the popular parallel port CD-ROM devices currently on the market use one of the adapters listed above. Some of these devices may require some extra steps. In particular, some older models of the Freecom Power CD must be first initialiased with the DOS drivers and left powered on while booting into the RedHat installer. The new battery powered drives from Freecom may fail to load on the first attempt, but they should work on the second try.

To make room for the new drivers, the modified boot disk does not contain drivers for any of the proprietary (legacy) CD-ROM devices. (If you have one of them, you probably don't need to use the parallel port driver.) Drivers for some of the more obscure SCSI adapters have also been removed.

Once you have downloaded the disk image, you will need to use a program like RAWRITE.EXE to copy the image onto a formatted floppy. RAWRITE.EXE is available on the RedHat 5.2 CD in the dosutils directory. For more information, read Appendix B of the RedHat 5.2 Installation Guide. Do not attempt to copy the file onto the diskette as a DOS file, it won't fit.

If you run into difficulty using this boot disk, do not contact RedHat Software. Contact me, grant@torque.net, for any support related to this special boot disk.

Please note however, that I cannot make any guarantees that this boot floppy will work with your specific drive. I do not have unlimited resources, and cannot always respond immediately to e-mail. If you get a "boot failure" message while reading this disk, please try reformatting the floppy and copying the image to it again.

 More information

Visit the paride home page for more information about the paride suite of drivers.

 Small print