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Create Debian 'etch' Installer Floppies:


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Your system must have a good floppy drive, and the BIOS set to boot from it, because we will be installing Debian etch from floppy disks.
We will be doing a network install, so make sure the machine has an Ethernet card and the ability to connect to the Internet.

You need to obtain 5 standard IBM formatted 1.44MB floppy disks that will be used for installation.
This portion will assume you are at a Windows computer.
I could include slightly modified instructions for Unix/Linux, but I won't.
If you have not done so, make a new directory on your Windows computer and call it 'debian' or something.

We are going to download "image files" into our debian directory that will be used to create the floppies.
Browse to:
http://ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-i386/current/images/floppy/
or for another (possibly less stable, but also possibly better) choice, see the daily build at:
http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/daily/
We need boot.img, root.img, net-drivers-1.img, net-drivers-2.img and cd-drivers.img.
Make a note of the Last Modified Date.

If you have an ancient CD-ROM drive, the installation software may request the CD-ROM disk (cd-drivers.img). But this is unlikely.
Remember that every link in this document opens in a new window, so if it appears nothing happens when you click a link, take a look at your Taskbar. Save all five files to the debian folder. We also need some software that will use these images to create the floppy disks.

Browse to:
http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite
Download and unzip Binary rawwritewin-0.7.zip to your debian folder. If you are running Win95, 98 or ME, you will also need place diskio.dll in the same folder as rawwritewin.

Have 5 formatted 1.44MB floppies available and simply use the rawwritewin.exe program to browse for your image files and create floppies from them.

During the Debian installation process, after you have used the boot.img and root.img disks to begin the installation, you will be asked to load drivers from a floppy:
[Load drivers from floppy now?]
Insert the net-drivers-1.img disk, then select [Yes]
Make sure the correct floppy is inserted before you hit [Yes]
Repeat for the second net-drivers disk