Installing Xandros on an IBM Thinkpad 600 or 770X

Q: Booting from the CD results in the screen displaying "L 80 80 80 80 80 80 ..." and adding another "80" every few seconds.

A: If not already Windows-free: Create the install boot disk by booting into Windows, put the Xandros CD in, and when the CD auto-starts in Windows, select floppy as the boot device and you can then create the boot floppy. Reboot from the floppy, and install Xandros.

A: If already Windows-free: See below.

How To Install Xandros From CD On Thinkpad

From http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?p=18864

Target Machine: Thinkpad 600E, XP OS, 160 mb ram, no floppy drive

Step 1: Obtain loadlin.exe version 1.6c

Step 2: Create, copy, borrow, whatever, Win98 boot floppy

Step 3: Create bootable CD using floppy emulation and Win98 floppy, add loadlin.exe file to CD image in burner and burn CD.

Step 4: Boot Thinkpad with CD from Step 3 with CDROM support.

Step 5: Copy loadlin.exe from CD to ramdrive created by Win98. On my machine, Win98 can't recognize the XP file sytem so it assigns C: to its ramdrive and D: to the CDROM.

Step 6: Remove boot CD and insert Xandros installation CD.

Step 7: Log onto the CD. Again, on my machine it's drive D:

Step 8: Bearing in mind the Win98 ramdrive is C: on my machine and the CD is drive D:, issue the following command at the DOS prompt using the appropriate drive letters Win98 has assigned:

c:\loadlin vmlinuz init=/sbin/init initrd=d:\boot\initrd.gz root=/dev/ram

Unlike the usual floppy install, there will be no selection menu and no splash screen. Instead, the system will display screens of messages as the kernel loads and does its thing. The screen will then go blank for awhile, and then display an arrow cursor. A little more time and the Xandros graphical installation initial screen will be displayed. At that point, proceed and enjoy!

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