These are root-install disks for Slackware 9.0.

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
2 floppy images (install.1 and install.2), and you'll need both of them.

> 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, install.2: These are the Slackware installation disks, used
to install Slackware Linux to its own partition.

To load the installer from floppy disk, you'll need to write
each to these to a floppy disk, and use a bootdisk to load them.

NOTE: The 'dialog' program used by the install system is not
forgiving of extra keystrokes entered between screens, so type
carefully. :-)

There are also these supplemental hardware support disk images, used in
conjunction with 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.

There is also a single "rescue" floppy image, since we don't want to be
required to load two 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".

And finally, there is a very small image containing the Smart Boot Manager:

sbootmgr.dsk This nifty little tool allows selecting various devices to boot
from a menu, and even allows booting a CD-ROM in machines where
the BIOS doesn't support it (or it's supposed to support it, but
it just doesn't work). If you have trouble booting the
Slackware CD-ROM, you might try writing this image to a floppy,
booting it, and then selecting your CD-ROM drive as the boot
device.

The SBM installer is available as a Slackware package (called
"btmgr") in the extra/ packages collection.