Yes it can.  Download and burn this image to cd (it's only 25M).

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/trinux/trinux-80rc2-2.4.5.iso

Pop the CD into the machine and boot.  Assuming you can boot from CD,
you'll get a bash shell prompt running as root.  Any drives that were
detected will be listed on / (e.g. /hda1 /hdb /hdc).  Mount the CD and
load any aditional packages that you will need (network card driver,
ext3, samba, nfs, pcmcia, etc...) and copy your files off.

Good luck

On Sat, 2003-04-26 at 13:31, Ben Bargabus wrote:
> Hello,
> I have an NT machine that will no longer boot (long story) but I'd like
> to get onto the drive and retrieve a few files I haven't backed up
> before blowing everything away and reinstalling.  The problem I have is
> that my NT box has its drive formatted as NTFS so I can't just use a DOS
> boot disk to get in there.  Here's my question, can I build a linux
> install that will fit on a floppy with NTFS support and a driver for my
> 3Com fastether xl card (so I can connect to another box and transfer
> said files off)?  Which distro(s) would work well for this?  Are there
> any HOWTOs you could point me to?
> Thanks for all your help,
> Ben.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org
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-- 
Chris Frederick <cdf123 at cdf123.com>

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