Richard, Are both of your computers (laptop and desktop) 64 bit capable? Not that this matters too much to my below suggestion.
This might help you if you can remove the drives from the laptop and/or desktop. I often take a drive out of a computer, then put the drive into a computer that can boot from a installation DVD or can boot from a USB install memory drive. Then I install a my Debian installation selecting to install "all drivers" and not just drivers for this computer. After the installation, using "apt install [package]", I also install most free and non-free firmware (particularly video and networking), then I put the drive back into the original computer, and boot up. (Note: Sometimes I have issues with Nvidia graphic's cards, and after booting up I have to press Alt-F2 to log in as root and then run any commands to specifically install or uninstall video drivers) After booting up, I run: # update-initramfs -u # update-grub And reboot again. This process may not always work, but in most cases it has helped me out. George. On Thursday, 01-08-2024 at 22:41 Richard Owlett wrote: > I have an elderly Sony laptop and a more ancient desktop with unknown > motherboard happily running i386 Debian 9.0. As far as I can tell the > BIOS of neither machine supports booting from a flash drive. Neither has > functional CD/DVD drive. Both hard drives have copious free space. > > Both machines have internet access. > Though this machine is 64Bit capable and bootable from flash, it does > not have adequate free space for an additional OS. > > Are there documented install instructions covering machines described in > first paragraph? > > TIA > > > >
