no HD boot

[portablevcb]

Ok, I have a PC (Toshiba laptop based, non-bootable CDROM, Pentium 75, 40MB ram) I am using for a dedicated controller operation. I want to boot from a floppy and have a CD but no HD.

I know I can do this, but, how do I:
1) make a boot floppy with a kernel configured different from the one on my desktop
2) make boot process recognize the CDROM as the main drive (no the CDROM is not bootable)
3) make a CD with all applicable files for running the linux kernel and an X windows application (compiled with gcc and gtk).

I would really like to run this thing in a mode simliar to an embedded processor, ie, turn on and run an application, but I have no vibration resistent static storage. I can live with the floppy only approach for my application if I really have to, but, I would really lik to be able to use an X interface.

My "real" machine is a Dell laptop running SuSE 7.1 (2.4.4 kernel). I am doing the software development on it.

[Linuxcool]

Try DemoLinux (http://www.demolinux.org/).

[portablevcb]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually the Demo site did not have what I really wanted, but, it had a link to linux gazette (another resource I had forgotten about). I did a search and voila, several articles on making boot disks and root filesystems, and bootable CD ROMS with live filesystems.

Thanks.