A laptop worth saving?

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Mar 11, 2004, at 1:00 AM, Rob wrote:

>
> Mike Jackson wrote:
>> jalley at toomanymirrors.homelinux.com wrote:
>>> Greetings all, I'm a long time unix/linux user but have been away  
>>> from
>>> FreeBSD for about a year or so and would like to solve that personal
>>> fault.  I have a laptop (IBM ThinkPad T20) that once ran FreeBSD but
>>> currently sits with out floppy, OS, and at last test <TA-DA> no  
>>> CDROM. So my question is what are my options if I wanted to get  
>>> FreeBSD running
>>> on it?  I have another Linux box on the LAN but that's about it.   
>>> Thanks
>>> for any help
>> You can install FreeBSD over the serial port with a null-modem cable.
>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install- 
>> advanced.html
>
> But he clains to have neither a floppy drive, nor a CD-rom.
> I guess you need some very intelligent magic here to get FreeBSD (or
> any other OS) installed under such conditions, if at all possible.
>
> If the LANcard has an EEPROM, one could maybe boot via the network as a
> starting point for installing FreeBSD on the local harddisk.
>

Does it have USB ports?  Can you boot a USB CD with FreeBSD?

Chad