How to Install w/o Floppy?

modified: 10 May 2003

Q: Q. My computer only has a CD/RW, no floppy. can I install Minix somehow? I don't think I can make a bootable cd, but I'm not sure...

A: I'm assuming if you have a CD/RW you have a fairly modern computer with lots of disk space and memory.

If you just want to experiment with Minix and you have a Windows FAT file system, you can use DOS-Minix. If that isn't what you really want, make a second partition and use DOS-Minix as a starting point. From DOS-Minix you can use the Minix part and mkfs commands to convert the second partition into a Minix partition and migrate Minix there.

Even if you have Windows NT, 2K or XP with an NTFS file system, if you are going to repartition your disk to install Minix, you could make two additional partitions, and configure one as a bootable FAT system with an older version of Windows or even MS-DOS to support DOS-Minix. When you have Minix running on the other new partition you can then make the first one into an additional Minix file system and mount it on the Minix root.

There are a few things I've left out -- for instance if you are starting with a newer Windows version you'll need to learn how to boot multiple operating systems. It can be done.

See also the article Installing Minix from CD-ROM?

This is based on an article originally posted to the comp.os.minix newgroup:

From: awoodhull@hampshire.edu
Subject: Re: how to install w/o floppy?
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 11:23:43 GMT

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