The future of Diskette bootstraps

[david]

At 02:55 PM 5/17/2004, you wrote:
>david wrote:
>
>>One of my systems does not support CD-ROM boostrap.  FC1 provided a 
>>bootstrap diskette which solved the problem, and let me install from the 
>>network or from CDROM, both of which worked for me.
>>
>>Is this capability going to be maintained in future version of Fedora?
>>
>>If not, is there some option that would work?
>>
>>David Kurn
>
>I would presume that boot floppies should be around for a little while 
>longer but floppies are too small to be used much longer.
>
>I have been noticing more and more computers being sold that don't come 
>with floppy drives anymore. I'm not just talking about Mac's either. We 
>have a bunch of little machines we use for single purpose servers, and 
>they don't come with a floppy or CD, so we hookup a CD to get the install 
>started and do a network install.
>
>Good luck.


-----------------

I got several responses to this (you guys are great), but maybe I have to 
refine the problem space better.

Dell Workstation 400 MT, which I use as my crash-and-burn test machine.

Pentium II 300, yah ... old machine
No USB
No Network boot (as far as I know)

I've seen only hard-disk or diskette boot.  And with these constraints, 
I've been able to load up W2k, Windoze XP and Fedora Core 1, because each 
of them has a diskette bootstrap method.

It seems to me that what's needed is a relatively simple and OS-independent 
diskette which takes the diskette bootstrap, and turns it into a CDROM 
bootstrap.

Or, rescue the hard-drive and toss the computer?

David