In many cases, you'll have to do your first boot from floppy disks, using the rescue floppy. Generally, all you will need is a high-density (1440 kilobytes) 3.5 inch floppy drive. ]]> CD-ROM based installation is supported for some architectures. On machines which support bootable CD-ROMs, you should be able to do a completely installation. Even if your system doesn't support booting from a CD-ROM, you can use the CD-ROM in conjunction with the other techniques to install your system, once you've booted up by other means; see . Both SCSI and IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported. In addition, all non-standard CD interfaces supported by Linux are supported by the boot disks (such as Mitsumi and Matsushita drives). However, these models might require special boot parameters or other massaging to get them to work, and booting off these non-standard interfaces is unlikely. The Linux CD-ROM HOWTO contains in-depth information on using CD-ROMs with Linux. ]]> IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported on all ARM machines. On RiscPCs, SCSI CD-ROMs are also supported. ]]> On DECstations, booting from CD-ROM requires a SCSI CD-ROM drive capable of working with a logical blocksize of 512 bytes. Many of the SCSI CD-DROM drives sold for the PC market do not have this capability. If your CD-ROM drive has a jumper labeled "Unix/PC" or "512/2048", place it in the "Unix" or "512" position. CD 1 contains the installer for the r3k-kn02 subarchitecture (the R3000-based DECstations 5000/1xx and 5000/240 as well as the R3000-based Personal DECstation models), CD 2 the installer for the r4k-kn04 subarchitecture (the R4x00-based DECstations 5000/150 and 5000/260 as well as the Personal DECstation 5000/50). To boot from CD, issue the command boot #/rzid on the firmware prompt, where # is the number of the TurboChannel device from which to boot (3 on most DECstations) and id is the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive. If you need to pass additional parameters, they can optionally be appended with the following syntax: boot #/rzid param1=value1 param2=value2 ... ]]> Installation system booting from a hard disk is another option for many architectures. boot your system over the network. ]]> After the operating system kernel is installed, you can install the rest of your system via any sort of network connection (including PPP after installation of the base system), via FTP, HTTP, or NFS. The Debian boot disks contain a kernel which is built to maximize the number of systems it runs on. Unfortunately, this makes for a larger kernel, which includes many drivers that won't be used for your machine (see to learn how to build your own kernel). Support for the widest possible range of devices is desirable in general, to ensure that Debian can be installed on the widest array of hardware. Generally, the Debian installation system includes support for floppies, IDE drives, IDE floppies, parallel port IDE devices, SCSI controllers and drives. The file systems supported include MINIX, FAT, Win-32 FAT extensions (VFAT), among others (note that NTFS is not supported by the installation system; you can add it later, as described in ). The disk interfaces that emulate the ``AT'' hard disk interface which are often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or ATA are supported. Very old 8 bit hard disk controllers used in the IBM XT computer are supported only as a module. SCSI disk controllers from many different manufacturers are supported. See the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for more details. Not supported are IDE SCSI drives and some SCSI controllers, including EATA-DMA protocol compliant SCSI Host Adapters like the SmartCache III/IV, SmartRAID controller families and the DPT PM2011B and PM2012B controllers. The 53c7 NCR family of SCSI controllers (but 53c8 and 5380 controllers are supported) ]]> Pretty much all storage systems supported by the Linux kernel are supported by the Debian installation system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support floppies on the Macintosh at all, and the Debian installation system doesn't support floppies for Amigas. Also supported on the Atari is the Macintosh HFS system, and AFFS as a module. Macs support the Atari (FAT) file system. Amigas support the FAT file system, and HFS as a module. ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. The following SCSI drivers are supported in the default kernel: Sparc ESP PTI Qlogic,ISP Adaptec AIC7xxx NCR and Symbios 53C8XX IDE systems (such as the UltraSPARC 5) are also supported. See Linux for SPARC Processors FAQ for more information on SPARC hardware supported by the Linux kernel. ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. The following SCSI drivers are supported in the default kernel: Qlogic ISP NCR and Symbios 53c8xx Adaptec AIC7xxx IDE disks are also supported. Note, however, that on many systems, the SRM console is unable to boot from IDE drives, and the Jensen is unable to boot from floppies. (see for more information on booting the Jensen) ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support floppies on CHRP systems at all. ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support the floppy drive. ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. ]]> Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. This means that FBA and ECKD DASDs are supported with the old Linux disk layout (ldl) and the new common S/390 disk layout (cdl). ]]>