Written by Jeff Borders
Specs:
P166 with MMX
4 Gig hard drive
Floppy Drive
CD-Rom
3 PCMCIA slots (2 type 1, 1 type II)
Mouse: Touchpad
12.1 TFT screen
96 MB of Ram
Various nics. (Netgear FA411, 3Com 3CXFE575BT)
3com Megahertz 56K fax/modem
Ran X in 800x600 16 bit mode.
Had trouble booting from CD-Rom until I found a bios upgrade for the CF-25.
Tried every method of network install, but was hampered by nics that weren't supported by pcmcia boot images. Get an old crappy nic that is already in the boot image. This gave me fits with distros like Slackware and Redhat. It will definitely save you time. You can always switch out the nic afterwards.
Redhat9 and Slackware worked fine. The only problem was an occasional kernel panic, but I suspect that was related to my 3com nic.
I've included a link to the panasonic drivers and bios upgrade here. Do the research and make sure this is the right bios for your model of cf-25. I believe there were 3 different iterations of this machine and it will only work for the last one. I repeat... Use at your own risk! Don't come crying to me if you fry your laptop. In fact, don't do it. Use a network install instead.