i have a thinkpad without a cdrom and i want to install linux on it. in windows i'd make a dos boot disk with fdisk and format on it, stick the drive in another machine make a 600mb partition and copy ...

Mebbe something with GRUB? I dunno. Is it an IDE drive, or is it one of those weird old drives that is connected to the soundcard? I would do something other than cd-rom install if it was one of those ...