Problems Installing Linux- (Damn Small Linux)

[badatcomputers]

I know this is a hardware problem, but I am posting here for advice anyways. I have an old (1996 or so) Toshiba Tecra 510CDT. It had no operating system, so I put windows xp on it (it's all i had). Needless to say on a pentium 1 processor win xp is a bit slow. I know nothing about linux, but I heard about this 'damn small linux' distribution. I made a boot disc and ran it using my newer desktop computer, and it worked fine, I liked it- seems perfect for my old laptop.
Here is the problem- I can't get the laptop to boot the disc. In BIOS, boot from cd is not a choice.. it has, FDD (there is no floppy disc), HDD and HDD2. Is there a way to download linux (preferably a small version that will work well with my slow old laptop) directly onto the hard drive, or somehow get it to replace windows? I heard about this network install, or something like that, but I have no idea what this means.
Any advice would be great.
The laptop has no usb ports, no floppy disc, but the cdrom drive (10x) works fine.

[kage]

When you say there is no floppy disk, do you mean you do not have a disk, or something is wrong with the floppy drive? If it has a floppy drive, and if you could purchase a floppy disk somewhere (walmart, office depot, staples, etc) you'd be in luck.

Older laptops/computers cannot boot from a bootable cd, which presents a problem when trying to get a newer OS (such as linux) installed. A while back, I ran into a similar problem. I ran across 'Smart Boot Manager' which is a bootable floppy disk that allows you to boot media such as cd-roms and usb drives on older computers that cannot. There site is located here: http://btmgr.webframe.org/ It appears their site is down at the moment, but you should be able to acces it via google's cache. Anyway, try that, see if it helps any.

I heard about this network install, or something like that, but I have no idea what this means.

A network install is essentially using a live linux system (ie: from either a cd, floppy, or usb drive) to boot a computer. The live system is small, usually only large enough to containt the tools needed to partition the disk and start the ftp/ssh installation. More information can be found here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Network-Install-HOWTO.html

[badatcomputers]

Are you sure btmgr needs a floopy drive in order for it to work? because I don't have one

[badatcomputers]

ohhh ok, I understand now. I got it to work, once, now there is a new problem, see the newer topic I posted please.