On Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 11:22:56PM +1000, terryc wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jul 2021 21:07:43 +0900
> Olaf Meeuwissen via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> > Hi g4sra,
> >
> > g4sra via Dng writes:
> >
> > > <--snip-->
> > > This is why Devuan's installer will ask\prompt you to insert
> > > additional installation media such as a USB stick. There are just
> > > too many Gigabytes of Drivers required to satisfy every corner
> > > case, put the drivers your quirky hardware requires on a USB stick
> > > and use it when prompted! I do not ever want to have to install an
> > > OS from 31 removable media's ever again! (Windows NT
> > > anybody?)._______________________________________________
>
> I've done that once, but mostly it has been various versions of Novell
> which thankfully are not that many as NT was.
>
> >
> > Me waxes nostalgic and remembers installing Debian from 12
> > floppies ;-) --
>
> Did it work?
>
> My installation didn't, so I then tried the Slackware floppies which
> also didn't work.

By the time I switched to Debian (.9x release), the ATA cdroms were
working with the kernel without modification. Before that, I would drive
to Pullman, WA, where a friend was going to school, with a large pack of
3.5" floppies and a blank CD, since it would take too long at 2400 baud
to download from where I lived. I would spend the weekend there,
downloading the install set of Slackware with enough packages to be able
to rebuild the kernel, and put the rest of the packages I needed onto
the CD. I would bring the whole mess back home, get the base system up,
modify the source of the kernel to recognize my CDROM drive, and then
build the kernel, so I could finish setting it up on my shiny new 386DX.

Friends would be angry with me, since I would do all this with a 12pack
of beer, and not remember how I did it the next day. (The installation
was done drunk, not the rest of it...)

> Aaah, those were the days.

Indeed...