[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux boot floppy -- making it without windows or dos

[Peter A. Koren]

I've got a problem. I just bought the Mandrake 10.1 powerpack set and
want to upgrade. But my computer has a bug and will not boot off of the
CDROM because of some error, probably a faulty BIOS, even thought I set
the BIOS to try the CDROM first. So I am stuck with using a floppy disk
to boot. I have been doing this for years on my ABIT BP6 based system.

The problem now is that all of my old floppy disks have aged into
uselessness and I could not install windows or dos which I have always
used before for just one thing -- having rawrite create a boot disk for
linux using the proper image file on the linux distribution CD. Using
the dd command under linux does create files on a blank formatted brand
new floppy, but it also creates bad blocks and I don't want to bother
trying to install Linux with a copy method that is so buggy. Is there a
solution to getting the floppy boot method working without resorting to
Windows? In any case, I do not want Windows on my machine now that my
wife uses Linux. That was a hard enough battle and I do not want to go
back.

-- Pete