RE: [linrad] Live-CD for linrad

[Leif Asbrink <leif.asbrink@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hello Josh,

Today the CD arrived by mail. I have a slow modem here, downloading
33 M is not practical;)

My friends at Antennspecialisten who made the CD say that it works
on something like 50% of the computers they tried it on.

My "Internet computer" on which I never tried Linux before seems
to work. The motherboard has integrated sound and video, I
can see spectra on screen but I can not got audio input and output
simultaneously. Would probably be ok with one more soundcard.

The PIII computer does not boot from a CD any more. I do not know
what has happened to it, but other bootable CD's give the same
result: "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM:", then nothing at all.....

I tried a portable, a Packard Bell, svgalib does not work.
I get a good selection of video modes to try, but none of them works.

> Did it work when you tried it?
So the answer is not really....

> Should I keep making new images when there is a new release of linrad?
Would it not be possible to make a CD that boots like the present one
but that tries to mount the floppy, looks if there is a linrad binary 
file on the floppy, then executes linrad from the floppy if the file is 
available there. This way upgrading Linrad versions would be very easy:)

Another thing, saving parameter settings is very convenient. It seems
to me parameters are not saved now, all settings disappear if the ram-disk
is switched off. It would be very good to have the system switch for
the floppy as the default directory (if there is a floppy). Then all
parameter files will stay on the floppy. Linrad currently looks for
calibration files, help and error messages and other files in the 
default directory. Presumably Windows will not like it's hard disks to
be written on "from the outside" so it might be a good idea to
place most of the files on the floppy. The CD could look for
the files: linrad, help.lir and errors.lir on the floppy, copy them
all to the floppy from the CD if they are all missing.
Then everything could be executed from the floppy. The only
other files needed are the EME database files that could stay 
permanently on the CD.

As you see I love to use floppies, but maybe many computers come
without floppy drives these days. If that is the case, some other 
solution would be needed. For example one could look for a directory
named C:\linrad on the hard disk. If it is present the user could get
the option to decide if he wants to work from there or not.
If the user works from there, parameter and calibration files may be
changed on the hard disk which should be perfectly safe but might
cause Windows to complain and do a hard disk test before starting.
In normal linrad operation one would just copy everything from 
C:\linrad to the ramdisk and execute from there without any permanent 
changes to anything.

I will take the CD to some of the stores around here and see if they
allow me to try to make their portable computers run from it. I would
love to have Linrad on a portable:)


73

Leif / SM5BSZ



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