[Wizard] Finding a wizard

[Craig Ringer]

> I got a cable with mine for $15 from Willetton. It allows me to plug the
> laptop HD into a normal IDE cable so I can plug it into my computer.

That's definitely the easy way to do it. I didn't initially get such a 
cable, so I ended up adding an etherboot image to the boot menu in the 
RH install, netbooting a debian installer, and doing a network debian 
install ;-)

The hard disk cable is easier, and will give you much more luck with 
more brain-dead OSes that don't like net installs. Most linux variants 
can then simply be disk-imaged across, or installed by any of the usual 
profusion of methods.

If you wanted to get Win9x on there, you'd want to drop the HDD into a 
PC with a CDROM, boot the '98 CD, partition the HDD, format it (include 
DOS system files with "format /S"), and just copy the entire CD contents 
to the HDD. Remove the HDD, put it in the Wizard, boot the copy of DOS 
on the HDD and use that to install Win98.

A similar procedure probably applies for other Windows variants, but if 
you wanted an NTFS filesystem you'd be looking at further complexity 
(read: don't ask me, I don't care).

Another way would be to modify a 44-to-40-pin adapter so that you could 
use it in the Wizard's ATA socket, then you could power the HDD (via 
another adapter) and a CDROM from another PC's PSU while installing. 
This is how Brett at Netway Wembley did it, but wouldn't by my chosen 
method unless I wanted to get Win2k/XP on there.

A final method would be to get a floppy disk cable, and use that to 
install or fire up etherboot. This makes life easier if an initial 
netboot install fails somehow. It'll be 2 weeks before Netway has the 
floppy cables in :-( so I'll be making do with a HDD adapter in the mean 
time.

Craig Ringer