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Yes. Linux On A Disk was designed precisely to give you that freedom of choice. Installing LOAD will not change your Windows 95, Windows 3X, Windows NT, or DOS system, because the Linux system resides on a separate disk drive. The Linux On A Disk system will be able to read and write to your C: drive, even Windows 95 Fat32 partitions. This allows you to exchange files with Windows. You can use Linux's superior performance on the Internet to download files to be used by Windows. You can use the provided Ghostscript RIP to view postscript files created with Photoshop or Pagemaker. These are just a few examples. With Linux and Windows on your machine, the sum is greater than the parts.
You make the choice of which operating system to use at boot time. When the computer first accesses the hard disk on boot up you are presented with a prompt, [LILO: ]. If you do nothing at this prompt, the dual boot loader will time-out after 15 sec and then boot drive C:. If you hit <Enter> at the prompt it will boot drive C: immediately. If you type LINUX at the prompt, you will boot the Linux On A Disk system. If you hit the <Tab> key at the prompt, you will be given a list of available boot options. This is useful because the LILO boot loader is completely customizable, You can change the default boot, the time-out, even add other O/S to the menu. Of course we provide you with compete instruction on how LILO works, and how to modify it.
Linux will run all Intel-based processors of the 386 class or better. These include the 386SX, 386DX, 486SX, 486DX, 486DX2, 486DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II, Cyrix 586 and 686, AMD's 5x86, K5 and K6. Motherboards using the AT (ISA) bus, PCI bus EISA and the VL bus are supported, the microchannel bus and PS/2 systems are not supported. Multiple processor are also supported.You must have at least 4MB Ram, although 16MB is recommended. If your system does not have and IDE or EIDE port for the hard drive (most systems do), one maybe added via a bus expansion slot. The LOAD-SCSI requires an Adaptec 2940UW (or equivalent) or a Buslogic 958 SCSI host adapter.
You will need at least a VGA video adapter to run X Windows and most graphical programs, although the shell will run find with a simple monochrome adapter. Most Mouse types are supported, as are most CD-ROM drives and tape backup units. For a complete list of compatible devices look at the supported hardware list.
It is as easy (or as hard) as installing a hard disk in your system. If you have never had the case off of your computer, and are afraid to deal with that end of things, then you had best find someone else to do it. If on the other hand, you have ever added a drive or a card to you system, it should be a piece of cake.
The only tool you are likely to need is a screw driver. The 50 page instruction booklet that comes with Linux On A Disk is focused on installation and will step you through the operation. After you remove the case, you will locate a free drive bay. If no 3.5" bay is available, we have provided an adapter that will support the drive in a 5.25" bay. The drive goes in with 4 screws, 8 when using the adapter. These are provided. Next, power must be connected to the drive, If there are no free drive power connector available in you system, we have provide a Y-adapter cable so that the connector to an existing drive maybe shared. Finally the data cable is connected to 40 pin connector on the drive. Again, we have provided you with a cable that will support 2 hard drive in case the one in your machine doesn't have a connector for a second.
If the LOAD disk is added as the second disk on a cable then it must remain jumper as it was shipped - as a SLAVE drive. If it is the only drive on the cable, then the jumper must be moved to the MASTER position. You will also need to have the drive recognized by the system BIOS. In most cases you will go into the CMOS setup and ask the BIOS to autodetect the drive.
With that part of the installation done, it is merely a matter of booting from the Linux On A Disk Installation Floppy and letting it run. In about 10 sec it will located the LOAD Disk, modify it to run in you system and install the dual boot loader. You are now ready to remove the floppy, reboot and login to Linux. It's that simple.
Once you have logged into the LOAD system, typing MENU at the shell prompt will bring up a menu of scripts that will step you though setting up the X Windows graphical users interface for you keyboard, monitor, video card and mouse. This takes about 5 minutes. Other menu selections allow you to setup your CD-ROM, and modem. From the X Windows control panel you can setup other devices, such as network interface cards and SCSI host adapters.
Yes! The LOAD disk is actually divided into three partitions. One partition is a swap partition than is used by Linux to supplement RAM memory. This partition take up about 107MB in the 2.5GB LOAD and about half that in the 1.28GB LOAD. The remainder of the space is divided into two working partitions, both are used by Linux as the drive is shipped, but it is a simple matter to free the second partition for other uses. On the 2.5GB and 4.1GB LOAD's we provide a program MakeVol1Dos that automates the process of reformatting the 2nd partition for DOS and remapping it back to Linux as a DOS partition. This is what we do when we add the Windows 95 option to the LOAD disk.
The 1.28GB LOAD does not use Logical Block Address (LBA) and so can work in older systems who's BIOS doesn't support drives larger that 540MB. It can do than even though the drive is larger than the system BIOS limit because Linux doesn't depend on BIOS to read the drive. LOAD does. however., depend on BIOS to boot the drive. This problem is solved by keeping the boot partition below 540MB. This also means that the second partition on the 1.28GB LOAD is not usable as a DOS partition. It can however be used for another Linux system, SCO or any other advanced operating system that does not limit itself to the system BIOS's view of the drive.
Good question. We don't normally include software that is buggy and known to crash often on Linux On A Disk. Seriously though, there are some applications that run under Windows that you may not be able to do without. You may want the best Windows 95 that Redmond has to offer. Unfortunately, they haven't seen fit to offer it as an upgrade to their loyal customers that were the early adopters of Windows 95. So here is a way to get it without buying a hold new machine.
On the other hand if you are buying a new machine, you may want to specify LOAD with the Win95 option as your hard drive. That will give you the best of both worlds.
We provide 30 days free technical support with each Linux On A Disk. It is our object to make your experience in getting up and running with Linux as painless as possible. We aim to get Linux to working for you. We provide this support primary via email and fax, and when necessary via phone, and in extreme cases, in shop and on-site investigation.
Via email: tech@CosmosEng.com
Via fax: (213) 930-1393
Via phone: (213) 930-2540
Technical support in the Linux community is legendary. It is one of the main reasons this system is so good. Developers have consistently come up with solid fixes for problems, and driver support for new hardware quicker than with any other the traditional software development models.
Starting in January 1998, we will be producing a quarterly LOAD CD-ROM that will contain the latest version of the LOAD software and the latest version of RedHat, and will allow the user to do an in-place upgrade with the RedHat Package Management System.
We also make upgrade materials, patches and bug reports available ASAP on our web site and FTP server.
The hardware itself is covered by a 3 year warranty. The drive may be returned to either us or the drive manufacture for repair or replacement at no charge during that three year period. If it is returned to us we will reinstall the latest version of the LOAD software before returning the drive to you. The drive manufacture will send you back a bare drive and you will have to reinstall the LOAD software from the CD-ROM. As always, you are responsible for your particular modification and software additions. So back up you data! We have provided tools for writing data to tape, cdr, zip. jazz, disk, floppy, etc, but you have to use them.
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