Pentium III, Compaq Armada. I need to wipe it clean. It's currently running old Mint v13 - Mate version. DVD drive is dead, so I can't use DBAN. It has 1 USB-1 port, but even if I could put DBAN on a flash, I'm sure this ancient box won't boot from flash. Are there any magic incantations in Mint that I could do to clear all user data, email and router passwords, etc?
act8192, You could remove the HD, install it in another computer or connect it via a USB adapter to another computer and wipe the HD.
Plop Boot Manager https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html USB boot without BIOS support (UHCI, OHCI and EHCI)
Brian K, Thanks, but that's impossible. Or so I think on this laptop. Their screws are some proprietary things. Will be hard to remove and put in an enclosure. Anyway, I got really lucky - in a box of archived stuff I had a replacement multi-whatever DVD thing. DBAN worked on that one, so all it well wiped. zapjb, Thank you as well. It's a complicated thing. I may try to use it in the future since I have another box that can't boot from flash.
In a strange way this thread made me smile. I was actually much younger when I had a box that wouldn't boot from a USB. LOL!!
