[LUGSB] strange Debian boot

[Michael Graffam]

Hello all..

I was wondering if someone here could give me a few pointers on a strange
Debian boot/install procedure that I need to cook up.

I have an old laptop that cannot boot from the CDROM, and the floppy
drive is broken.

I want to install Debian on it.

I have loadlin.exe, the kernel and such on the HD and I can boot the
linux kernel with loadlin. I tried:

loadlin linux root=/dev/ram ro initrd=root.bin

Loadlin.exe pulls DOS from RAM, and bootstraps the Linux kernel. The
kernel detects all the devices and tries to mount the root partition,
which is where it fails.

The above loadlin command is straight from the Debian boot.bat, so I
am at a loss to explain why this doesn't work.

I've used loadlin before, but I can't seem to get any of the installation
kernels (I tried Debian, Redhat and Knoppix) to find a root partition
properly.

Anyone have any ideas?