Will the Puppy Live CD still work with no HDD?

[Relztrah]

A friend gave me an old Compaq Presario 1675 to diagnose. The major problem with this machine is that the plug on the mobo where the power cable connects is missing and to me it's not worth fixing on a dinosaur like this. So obviously there's no way to boot or diagnose.

I offered to sell it for the owner, but I'll first remove the HDD in case it has any personal data on it. If somebody is willing to fix the electrical problem, will it still boot to a Puppy Live CD, assuming the CD-ROM and other components are working? RAM, battery and everything else visible is still intact.

I've used the Puppy Live CD on a couple different old laptops, but never with the HDD absent. It seems to me like the Live CD will still boot, but I'm not sure.

[Sylvander]

1. Puppy can indeed work with no HDD connected, and some people work with no HDD all the time.

(a) But circumstances decide whether it will work OK in any particular case.

e.g.
(b) Is there enough RAM so that the particular Puppy used isn't too big to fit in RAM.
If it were too big, the RAMdrive [in which Puppy runs] would overflow the RAM and need to go partly into a Linux swap partition.
Otherwise a swap partition isn't usually needed; I notice mine is only brought into use under most unusual circumstances like virus scanning the Windows partition.
Normally the swap partition would be on something fast [and able to be written and read a lot] like the internal HDD.

(c) some people have successfully used a USB Flash Drive to hold a Linux swap partition [if needed], but that probably isn't good for the Flash Drive.

2. Then of course, if you're going to boot Puppy off an optical disk...
You need to make a "pup_save" file somewhere.

(a) Doesn't need to be on a HDD; could be on any storage medium that Puppy is capable of accessing, which is pretty much anything.
A USB Flash Drive would be good.
And since such a session is only saved at shut-down, that doesn't wear out the Flash Drive.

(b) You can actually save each new session [at shut-down] back to a rewritable disk [DVD is good].
Each session is saved in a new folder, and at next startup all the previously saved folder contents are loaded.
I gave that a try, and it would have worked if I'd had enough RAM, but I didn't.
Apparently you need more RAM under those circumstances; I've forgotten why.
Probably the loading of all those folder contents needed all the extra RAM.

[Sylvander]

3.
(a) It would be possible to make on a Flash Drive, a FAT partition and a Linux Swap partition.
Then when running the Puppy loaded from the optical disk...
Run the "Puppy universal installer" to install that Puppy to the FAT partition on the Flash Drive.
That would automatically detect the Linux swap partition as it booted and bring it into use.

(b) If the BIOS can boot USB, then no problem.

(c) If the BIOS is unable to boot USB...
You'd need to make a "WakePup2" bootable floppy, and boot that and it would automatically load the Puppy held on the Flash Drive.
The bootable floppy makes loading a Puppy somewhat slower than loading with an optical disk.
They are both equally FAST once in operation.
A Puppy loaded from a Flash Drive is configured by default to save the running session back to the Flash drive every 30 minutes.

[Paul Komski]

The major problem with this machine is that the plug on the mobo where the power cable connects is missing and to me it's not worth fixing on a dinosaur like this.
If there is no way to power the mobo you are totally snookered.

[Relztrah]

2. Then of course, if you're going to boot Puppy off an optical disk...
You need to make a "pup_save" file somewhere.

I don't recall doing this when I was running it from a Live CD, but then maybe the pup_save file was automatically stored on the HDD unbeknownst to me.

(a) Doesn't need to be on a HDD; could be on any storage medium that Puppy is capable of accessing, which is pretty much anything.

On a 3½" floppy disk? This old jalopy has a floppy drive.

[Sylvander]

1. "I don't recall doing this when I was running it from a Live CD"
(a) The 1st time you shut down or reboot...
After the 1st time you booted the CD...
You would have been asked whether you wanted to make a "pup_save" file...
And then asked on which partition, on which of the detected storage media, you wanted to hold that "pup_save" file...
And whether you wanted to customize the name of the file by adding some characters on the end.
Go search all the root folders of all your partitions for such a file.

(b) You would also have then been asked whether you want to save various other files from the CD to that same location.
Puppy tells you that this speeds up the loading of the Puppy, because they load faster from HDD than they do from optical disk.

2. "On a 3½" floppy disk?"
NO!
Floppy disk is too slow and TOO SMALL.
Internal HDD is ideal, but if not that, then USB HDD would be next best choice.
Flash drive is fine for the pup_save file, but not quite so good for a Linux swap partition because it tends to wear out with frequent writes.
However, a swap file is hardly ever used by Puppy anyway, so not such a problem.