[plug] OFFTOPIC: Help with a Wizard PC

[Cameron Patrick]

(Apologies for continuing the OT thread.)

On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 12:14:14AM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:

| Sure, but it isn't especially easy. Windows tends to break horribly when 
| installed on one machine then moved, so you can't just install it using 
| a laptop disk adapter in your PC. You'll need to get an IDE cable for 
| the Wizard that'll let you attach a CD-ROM to it, and install that way.

I disagree.  Moving the drive to another machine should work fine.  I've
seen a few Win9x machines cope fine with motherboard + other vital
component upgrades, so I don't see why this shouldn't walk with the
Wizard.

Make sure you stick a copy of the RTL8139 drivers on there, though,
ready to install when you stick the drive in a real Wizard.

Another possibility is to format the drive, put a basic DOS system on
there along with a copy of the Windows CD and any extra drivers you
need.  Then drop the drive in the Wizard and run setup.exe - I don't
think it cares that it's not running from a /real/ CD.

| I did my Debian install the _really_ easy way - I just copied an 
| existing disk image I had on hand to the disk using my desktop, then 
| rewrote the MBR on the disk and dropped it back in the wizard.

It strikes me as amusing that people here seem to think that installing
Debian on a wizard is much less painful than installing Windows.  Not
that I disagree :-)

Cameron.