Since I’m now really interested in Haiku I am attempting to install it on the legacy PC I have before my main PC, a 9**MHz Pentium 3 196MB Dell Dimension. Fortunately I was able to burn the ISO on a disc using software that did the job properly, as I got the Haiku setup to run, booting from the disc. Originally I thought Windows 98 (which is currently on the machine) had it’s own partition, which I could write over with Haiku. Obviously I had guessed incorrectly.
Now here’s my question … I have searched the internet for free partitioning software and the software I found was EASEUS Partition Manager. The first problem I found was no matter how long it took, it would never get part the splash screen. Also, I have no idea if it would suit burning an ISO disc, popping it in the Dell and partitioning the hard drive using that.
So since many of you guys have had to use such software, which one would each of you recommend? The Dell doesn’t have hardware that allows it to connect to the internet (it does … but we don’t have a long enough ethernet or phone cable). Once that is done I can check out Haiku … I would love to try out this new operating system.
It sounds like you want to set up a Haiku-only machine. You can do that with Haiku’s DriveSetup, available from the Installer with the button “Set up partitions…”. Creating and deleting partitions is no problem, it’s just the resizing that’s missing currently.
I don’t think it makes a difference what filesystem you use when setting up the partition under Linux or some other OS. Once you’re in Haiku’s Installer, you’ll have to invoke DiskSetup anyway to initialize the partition with BFS. Haiku cannot be installed on another file system than BFS.
I managed to get it installed! However, when I restarted my computer and configured it to boot from hard drive, nothing happens. All there is is the white dash blinking in the corner of the screen. Haiku isn’t booting at all! Perhaps there’s something more I’ve got to do.
UPDATE: Yep, there was! The Boot Manager! It’s now working fine.
Great that things worked out for you, Paspie! Welcome to Haiku!
Though I was under the impression, a Haiku-only machine doesn’t need the Boot Manager. Normal installation should’ve made the system bootable and that’s that…
Since then I have realised that I really should have configured the partition to be made bootable. Still, it works fine as it is at the moment, I’ll install it differently next time.
LOADS of third party applications that won’t run on A2! Problems with Koffice installing but not loading, Atheros driver in bit of unknown state (don’t know if installed or not, if not don’t know what I need to access setup, etc etc) (developed before it hit the downloads)
Here’s some detailed specs of the machine. May upgrade at some point.
CPU: Pentium 3 933MHz
RAM: 196MB
Video Card: Generic VGA AGP (I think it’s 64MB)
Sound Card: Creative Soundblaster Live!
Might rebuild system (video card, motherboard, CPU and Hard drive) as I happen to be more of an AMD fan really.
