[cnelson8611]

I purchased a used pc from a pawn shop. At first the bios wasn't reading the hard drive but I fixed that little problem but then something happened with the network card so I decided to just wipe the hard drive out all together.

I've been wanting to install Linux on it but how would I go about installing without a cd-rom drive (pc has none installed). My only thought was to either put the hard drive in the computer I am running now, installing Linux on it then transferring the hard drive back to the other computer or, if there is a way, hook up the older pc to my new pc and transfer linux on it.

How should I install?

[macdude425]

Well, if it has a network card (or even modem, perhaps) there's always Debian Sarge Netinstall...

http://ftp.egr.msu.edu/debian/dists/...images/floppy/

This set of images gets the installer started from floppy, then gets the rest of the OS from the net.

[straightv6]

why not take the optical drive out of the computer you're using now to install?

[Greg]

Yeah, it won't work to install it on the harddrive on one computer and put it in the other. Easiest way is to just install a CD-ROM drive. You can find them really cheap these days if you don't want to take it out of your old computer.

[cnelson8611]

Yeah, don't quite want to bother taking my cd out of my other computer. I have a couple of older cd-rom drives, problem is that I don't know if they are capable of reading cd-r's.

[Murdoc]

another way is to download it = / It's not a good option but you can certainly try it. Otherwise if you have a portable hard drive (firewire) or ipod or any large storage mp3 players using USB will do.

[Camden]

cd r or through the usb would be the way to go, imho =/

[horndude]

Originally posted by Greg
Yeah, it won't work to install it on the harddrive on one computer and put it in the other. Easiest way is to just install a CD-ROM drive. You can find them really cheap these days if you don't want to take it out of your old computer.

yes it will