Cdrom drives for Linux

[Bond, Jeffery]

>Hi,
>I have a question about cd-rom for linux system.  Although it is not
>related to samba directly, I believe many people in this group are
>expert about linux and may give me correct answer.  I am going to buy a
>pc to install linux (the most recent slackware one).  My question is: do
>I need a scsi cd-rom drive to install and run linux on the machine?  is
>the regular one enough? -- if yes, I can save some money; if no, I have
>to order a scsi cd-rom.  I checked web site and some sources, but got
>confused.
>I appreciate any help!
>Hongwei Li

Hi,

I currently run RedHat Linux 2.0.27 on a 486DX4 and use an old Double   
speed Aztech IDE Cdrom drive without any problems. I can't comment about   
the latest Slackware distribution, because I haven't tried it. I did try   
an old version of Slackware a while ago and it didn't support my CDROM at   
the time. It did support lots of other IDE drives though. I'm sure all   
the latest Linux distributions support most IDE CDROMs now.

If your IDE CDROM still isn't supported, you can still install Linux my   
copying the Installation images from the CD onto an MSDOS/WIN95 HD   
partition using DOS or Windows, and then install linux from this   
partition. It's a bit of a pain though.

Hope this helps,


Jeffery Bond
LSI Engineer
NEC Technologies (UK)

<mailto:jeffery.bond at nectech.co.uk>