I, Seth Schoen, one of the three original developers of the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card, have forked the project to create the LNX-BBC mini-distribution.
The home page for that project is at http://www.lnx-bbc.org/.
Announcement of the project fork sent to mailing lists and developers (please forward to other people who should know).
In August 2001, we made our first release, called LNX-BBC 1.618. (See CHANGES for this version.) This release has been well-received; for example, Linux Weekly News said:
Get one if you can, the LNX-BBC project has created a high-quality distribution. [...] The new LNX-BBC should find its way into any system administrator's toolkit.
There's not much here for now, but you can try out
See also the EXPERIMENTAL nightly builds. Since these are built automatically, they may not work. Please give feedback if you try one of these!
(The new bbc-kit, which facilitates modifying and customizing a BBC, is coming soon; so is our archive of the sources for software included with 1.6.0.)
Here's Seth's informal todo list.
A mailing list for this project is available: lnx-bbc at zork.net. This mailing list is distinct and separate from the Linuxcare mailing list for Linuxcare's version of the project. That list is also called lnx-bbc.
You can also look at the official Linuxcare BBC home page, Linuxcare's home page, and the Lubbock Project.
The cloop driver is being maintained by Klaus Knopper.
cdrecord/mkisofs is maintained by Jörg Schilling, and is required to burn CD-R or CD-RW media from Unix systems, or to create your own ISO9660 filesystems. Schilling recommends the CD-R FAQ for those who want to learn more about CD-R and CD-RW; there is also a lot of other information on his cdrecord page.
There's also the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Where do you get business-card-sized CD-R media? Well, there are several companies which will provide professional duplication, in quantity, onto business card CD-R media. Linuxcare has used different companies for different versions. One of these is ShapeCD; I don't have information on the other vendors, but I would welcome it. Some developers have endorsed John Nicholson's services.
If you don't want to do duplication in large quantities, but you have your own CD recorder, you can buy business card CD-R blanks. Many different companies manufacture and sell these blanks, which normally work in a standard CD recorder. You can find a number of vendors by doing a Google search for "CD-R business card blank" or a Google search for "CD-R business card media". Most major distributors of CD-R media can probably provide or recommend a source for business card blanks.
Business card CDs take advantage of a format called MiniCD (also called "CD single", "80 mm CD"; these were originally intended for use with "single albums" with just a single track on an audio CD). (The largest diameter of a business card CD and of a MiniCD are the same, but the business card CD has been cut to approximate a business card; a MiniCD is still a full circle.) MiniCDs are smaller CDs which fit into the indentation in the center of a CD-ROM drive. Business card CDs typically hold 50 MB; MiniCDs hold 180 MB. A MiniCD will fit easily inside your pocket, but not inside a wallet. Most distributors who sell business card media will also sell MiniCD media.
Never use a business card CD or MiniCD in a slot-loading CD drive (like the iMac or many car stereo systems), a caddy-loading drive, a vertically mounted drive, a drive without a MiniCD indentation, or a drive which spins faster than 48x. You should also not use these CDs in most jukebox or CD changer systems. The CD may damage your drive or may become stuck.
The standard BBC system requires a PC with an IDE or PCI SCSI CD-ROM drive, and a BIOS which can boot from that drive. The PC must have a 386 or later CPU (i.e., a CPU capable of running Linux!), and 16 MB of RAM. (A custom BBC can be made which has smaller memory requirements.) Non-Intel CPUs such as those from AMD and Cyrix apparently work in general -- if the standard x86 version of the Linux kernel works on your system when compiled for i386, the BBC should boot there.
Some systems which otherwise meet these requirements but can't boot directly from CD can still use the BBC by booting from a boot floppy. (This is documented in a file on the BBC itself.)
Booting the non-standard ISOLINUX version has the same requirements as the standard version, with the additional requirement that the BIOS must be able to boot El Torito CDs in no-emulation mode.
This page is maintained by Seth Schoen. It has no affiliation with Linuxcare. Linuxcare is a trademark of Linuxcare, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. United States copyright law is a regulatory capture of the publishing industries.