"Jennie St John" <tillhhaturne232@hotmail.com> writes:
> alright here i go,
>
> i can make the boot and root disks fine and they work.

How did you make these? On a linux machine with 'dd' or a msdos
machine with one of the flavours of 'rawrite'? If "mdos + rawrite"
then this answers question below:

> The question is, how do you use windows to write floppys that are
> binary




> what ftp client
> will ensure that i get the transfer and download to be in binary as well?

Use the 'i' or 'binary' setting of your ftp program.


> any thoughts, ideas on how to install better would be nice and appreciated
>
If you have any networking capability on the laptop (doubtful), you could
use an NFS install.

You could use 'toms root boot disk' to boot up, clean your hard drive and ftp
stuff across.

You could remove the hard drive, put it in another machine and install
Linux, or even just copy the distro stuff across, then replace it in
your laptop.

Another (slower) way is to use a serial-transfer program to transfer one or
more of the 'disk sets', (say the 'a' and 'n' series, being the 'base'
and 'network' sets) to a spare partition on the hard drive and install a
bootstrapping system from there. Use that initial system to transfer and
install the rest of the stuff you want.

As the Perl enthusiasts say, "There is More Than One Way to Do It".
:-)

It all depends on what resources you happen to have available.


Jack
--
Vlad, Heisenberg & Thomas: The originators of FUD.