tbh what i want is a pcmcia card that can modify my laptop's boot process, but i don't think that's possible

my laptop only being able to boot from floppy or hard disk is shit when the floppy drive is broken, and has been for years
these drives don't grow on trees

@onfy assuming ide hard drive, compact flash to microsd adapter?

@noiob the laptop is running from a cf card. the problem is when shit hits the fan and you can't boot from it
try installing an operating system without anything to bootstrap!!

@onfy I'd pop the SD card in a computer, mount it in a VM and install on it that way. A hassle but you can image the card afterwards and you'll have something to fall back to

@noiob it never wanted to boot when i did that and i had to way to debug it
i wanted to know how the laptop was seeing the drive, but it's impossible when you can't boot the damn thing!

@noiob the worst thing about cool computer hardware is always being unable to use it

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