How to install Puppy 4.31 without a CD drive?

[jeditalian]

i write to you from a pentium mmx @166 ithink. about 32 mb ram. running windows 95. i found an old floppy disk and fixed an old floppy drive, put network drivers on this
AST ascentia p series. i downloaded puppy431 iso, found a win95 compatible winrar, because virtualbox for windows didnt work for 95. needed msi.dll and i got one but it was for a newer version of winblows.
i would have this thing running puppy if i hadn't lost the cd drive. so i extracted the pup.iso, i kept the original just in case. i want to full install to partition 2, aka D:\
i need a recent/decent grub.exe
i have one but it looks like its from 2004;
i need a sample menu.lst for puppy linux.
the one i have is def. OLD
sep 30 2004. got them from the same site.
so iam trying to do this from msdos. i have gotten as far as making a crude boot loader 1.puppy 2.windows. with the config.sys.
i wanted to try on a virtualmachine first but it is so hard to find win95 compatible software.
i was going to make a boot floppy but the instructions for fdlinux or something told me to format my disk to 1.68 mb with winimage which wrecked my only floppy, but i think i have fixed it into being usable again.
i'm not sure how to do all this linux stuff in windows, like make a swap but ithink the install will take care of that for me. my only problem is getting it running. i tried "loadlin vmlinuz" (loadlin.exe)and it does something but then it doesnt show me that its doing anything and i cant do anything so i gave up on that.
i have to figureout how to configure this menu.lst to find the extracted iso, or get that thing that mounts your iso in msdos like its a cd drive.
idk.
i needto load the kernelor something.
i tried a manual frugal install, but with 32mb of ram ishould probably doa full install. my d drive is 1gb and puppy linux can use it all.
plus i couldnt even figure out how to boot puppy for the frugal install, without a cd drive or usb ports. i dont know whatexact version of win95 i have here but i do have access to the old "sysedit" command from RUN.
so what i think im asking for here is someones menu.lst. someone who runs puppy from the first hard drive, second partition.
if not setup exactly like that, i can fix the numbering. i just dont want to risk turning this thing intoa paperweight because it is fun to play with since it runs really hot and it is really cold outside and that is a good combo lol.
any tips on software, methods, whatever, from your experiences with installing linux on something with no usb or cd drive.
i hope puppy has pcmcia support.
i gave my cousin the cd cuz their laptop was broken and i figured it could recognize the hardware.

[rubberdragon]

Here's an image of my grub boot. It doesn't rely on grub files on the HD, and contains my basic menu.lst. It omits a frugal puppy. Here's what you need:-

title Puppy 431 Frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
kernel /puppy431/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy431 nosmp
initrd /puppy431/initrd.gz

The item W95 DOS will do for W95.

[jeditalian]

lol i need to get lucky and find another floppy disk. unless they still sell those in stores. winimage and rawrite obliterated my only floppy, but at least i got drivers for the pcmcia ethernet adapter onto this thing with it. i am so tired of illegal operations and blue screens of death. if i could find the cd drive that came with this thing, all those problems would be solved.
is there any emulator that could run under windows 95, or some other way to run the puppy installer entirely from hard disk. or any lightweight os that could install itself from inside windows or ms-dos?
im pretty sure that cd drive is long gone. but i could give some ebay seller about 10 bucks and get a whole junk ast laptop or at least a cdrom drive for it. i just have had really bad experiences with ebay. 98% junk is what i have received from ebay.
im going to stick that stuff in my menu.lst but since the floppy is unusable i will have to find another way, or go find some floppies before this thing is running something useful.
on the bright side i have a defunct dell laptop coming on the way sometime eventually that i get to get up and running. since it was made in this decade, im pretty sure that means usb ports.
any way to install any version of linux that can run on a 166mhz pentium mmx with 32mb ram and a small portion of the 2gb hard drive, using .exe files and/or things like config.sys, autoexec.bat, and the .ini files?
cuz i need flash player and efficiency, thats why i chose puppy.
i also downloaded dsl but i cant figure out how to do it with that one either, and ive never even tried dsl on my real computer.

[Sylvander]

Puppy to a Flash Drive for Windows Users

[jeditalian]

windows 95 doesnt support usb, even if i had usb ports. which i could get on a pcmcia card for 5 bucks. but that thing is so old i wouldnt even attempt it. so i could do that thing and install it to the hard drive instead of a flash drive? i cant try until i get the hard drive adapter and back up the drive because its the only place i know that has the exact drivers i need for the hardware. but once i get the adapter, i can just unhook my sata drive and boot puppy onto my computer and do a hd install.

[Sylvander]

1. Oops, sorry about not noticing you don't have USB.
I was in a hurry...
Read the title...
Didn't read the post....
Posted that link thinking it might be of some help, then dashed off.

2. I'm something of a Puppy newbie, but...
Having read your posts with more care...
Things are not looking good.
With only 32 MB of RAM, it will be difficult to find ANY modern operating system to run well on that.
I remember someone previously struggling to do the same thing.
Wouldn't go so far as to say it's not possible.
Perhaps if you make, and Puppy uses, a Linux swap partition...
And install to the HDD...
Even then you may not be able to run a 100MB Puppy, and be forced to use one of the smallest Puppies.

3.
(a) At the thread I linked previously, steve_s is working on a method for circumstances such as yours.
See his post of 2009 Nov 30th at 11:54.
He may come up with this any time now.

(b) Might you beg, borrow or buy an inexpensive PCI to USB card?

(c) And install to a USB Flash Drive on some other PC?
And make a WakePup2 floppy on that other PC?
Then boot the floppy on your own PC?
To load the Puppy on the USB Flash Drive in your new PCI to USB card?

(d) Or better still...
Install a Puppy to a small/old/spare HDD, while it's temporarily fitted to some other PC, that includes a bootable optical drive...
Then swap it back into your own PC...
[With your Win95 HDD removed]
And boot it in your own PC.

[jeditalian]

puppy will use a swap partition until you create the pupsave then i think it uses the pupsave as swap because i made a 1g swap partition on a 2g flash drive, puppy booted with 600 something m free. rebooted and made a 32m save file and now it says 26m free, i have 256mb ram on what im playing with right now, little less than 256 is usable cuz some goes to video memory. probably wont even play with the old laptop till i order a 2.5 to 3.5 inch ide convertor and then setting up puppy will be easy and much faster than installing it on the system with 32mb ram and a 166mhz pentium. i dont know what kind of ram it uses or i would upgrade it to at least 64, but i think 80 is max for that system. never seen a 40mb ram stick before tho, and theres only 2 slots. the laptop is an AST ascentia P series and the motherboard was made by foxconn. when i hook up the 2.5 inch laptop hard drive to my main computer, it also has a foxconn motherboard, just made like 10 years later, because i think the laptop was made in 1997 and that makes me wonder why when i got my first computer about that time, it was 150mhz pentium and how could a laptop have a faster processor than a p.c. that was made around the same time. lol it doesnt happen anymore anyways. a laptop at 3ghz or more right now is uncommon i do believe but i havent been laptop shopping.
but yes puppy can use a swap partition, i made one in ubuntu or something and then booted puppy again and it detected and used it, but i guess it cant use it to save its settings.
my main concern right now is finding a linux distro that plays well with flash player, as well as windows does.. or finding a way to upgrade puppy linux because the package manager doesnt have the same kind of variety as i find in ubuntu. if i could figure out how to get some libraries off of a ubuntu cd, i think i could get puppy to do what i want. which right now is getting mangler from mangler.org to work. it works with ubuntu but puppy just doesnt have the required libraries or cant find them. and i can find the first set, then the second set is an rpm and i couldnt get unrpm to work like i think it should, like the pet installer automatically deals with pet files, but unrpm seems to need some kind of manual setup that i dont know how to do because i have been using windows for the past like 14 years and i guess dos before that because we had a commodore 64.
back then all you had to do was stick in a big ol floppy disk (that was actually 'floppy') and type RUN and wait a really longtime lol