These are root-install disks for Slackware 8.1.

If you are unable to boot the Slackware installation CD directly, you'll
need create these floppy disks in order to load the installer. In the past,
there's only been one rootdisk floppy called "color.gz", but now there are
5 floppy images, and you'll need all five of them. The reason for this is
that the size of the installer image after compression has exceeded 1.44MB,
and the kernel can either load a compressed rootdisk image, or an uncompressed
one that spans multiple floppy images.

> Mini FAQ:
> Q. But I just want something like the old color.gz that I can load
> as an initrd from the hard drive with LILO, or syslinux, or loadlin.
>
> A. I think what you're looking for is: isolinux/initrd.img
> This is a self contained, gzipped initrd like the old color.gz.

In addition to the install images, you'll also need a bootdisk. See the
bootdisks directory for those.

To create a floppy disk from one of these images, use the RAWRITE command on
DOS or Windows. For example, to make the first rootdisk image (install.1),
you'd put a formatted 1.44MB floppy in your floppy drive, and then run this
command:

C:\> RAWRITE INSTALL.1 A:

There are several versions of RAWRITE provided to handle most versions of DOS
and Windows. If one version doesn't seem to work, try another.

To make the floppy images under Linux, use the "cat" command to send them to
the floppy device. This command will make the first install disk:

cat install.1 > /dev/fd0

Here's a description of the disk images in this directory:

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

install.{1-5} These are the default Slackware installation disks, used to
install Slackware Linux to its own partition. NOTE: The 'dialog'
program used by the install system is not forgiving of extra
keystrokes entered between screens, so type carefully.

There's also these supplemental hardware support disk images, used in
conjunction with one of the disks above:

pcmcia.dsk This supplemental disk provides support for laptop devices. It
allows installing through a network or CD-ROM drive card. To
use this disk to scan for PCMCIA devices (this is only done if
you need to use them DURING the installation), you enter 'pcmcia'
after loading the 'install' disks and logging in.

network.dsk This supplemental disk provides support for ethernet cards. To
use this disk to scan for network devices (this is only done if
you need to use them DURING the installation), you enter 'network'
after loading the 'install' disks and logging in.

And finally, there is a "rescue" image, since we don't want to be required to
load 5 rootdisks every time we need to get a Linux prompt from floppy disks to
fix something:

rescue.dsk This is a BusyBox-based rescue disk for Linux. It is a
reasonably complete mini-Linux system running from a four
megabyte ramdisk, and contains an editor (vi), networking tools
like ifconfig, route, telnet, ping, and wget, and other tools that
might be handy for fixing your Linux machine if you ever get locked
out for some reason, or any time you just need to boot Linux to
"edit something quickly".