Browse the Internet without a hard drive....
Got a nice little computer here that I put Windows 98 on with the intention of running the United Devices cancer research program on it.

It has a 30gig Hard drive, a 200mmx Pentium processor, and 64 mb of EDO ram.

This little puter ran Windows 98 like a champ. At least it did until the hard drive failed. I tried everything to get it running again. It wouldn't fdisk. The Windows 98 cd would not recognize it. Spinrite didn't do any good. The Western Digital floppy said it had a fatal error number so-and-so and to contact Western Digital support at its website.

Well, just by coincidence, I had recently downloaded and burned to CD a Linux distro iso file called Damn Small Linux.

Damn Small LInux (DSL) is an Operating System ( you know: like windows 98, 2000, XP, etc) that you can run from a CD. I had tried it on my regular computer and it worked very well.

So, I got to thinking and wondered if it run from a CD without a Hard drive on the computer.

I went into the BIOS of the computer and set it to boot from a CD. Then I stuck the CD in the tray and booted the computer. It went into an install of the DSL, but would never complete it.

Next, I did what I should have done from the beginning. I read the DSL help files. It said that a computer needed 128 mb of ram before DSL would run completely in memory.

I hunted around and found 64 more mb ram to get that computer up to 128 mb total.

I booted again with DSL in the CD tray and DSL installed without a hitch. It recognized all the hardware and automatically configured the Internet connection and I was browsing the Internet without a hard drive.

Now, if you have several computers, this idea may not be of much use to you. However, if you only have one computer, and need to get on the Internet, then it might be useful to keep a copy of DSL around. Did I mention that it is free?

DSL is not a small download if you are on a dialup connection. It is about 50 mb and will take up to five hours to download.

If you can't wait that long or pay Internet by the minute or something, you can go here and order a CD delivered for $9 US.

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NOTE:
The download is an iso file. This iso file will have to be burned to a CD. The program that I use to burn the iso file to a CD is CDBurner XP Pro, which can be downloaded here. CDBurner XP Pro is Freeware (doesn't cost anything) and does an excellent job.