Re: [SLUG] breathing new life into old hardware

From: Ian Blenke (icblenke@nks.net)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 21:41:24 EST


ethan zimmerman wrote:
> Okay I wish to breathe new life into old hardware by turning an old pc
> into an email-checking-web-browsing-solitaire-playing machine.
>
> First the bad news (the hardware)...
> - 486DX 50Mhz
> - the bios can't see partitions bigger than 512MB
> - and it's running windows 95 (hehe)

Glad to see a win95 box die a quick and painless death (though a
horrible horrible demise would be more welcome ;)

> What I want...
> - a GUI with Mozilla (hopefully epiphany), Games, Gaim and XMMS
> - I would like to use GNOME, but then again I would also like to be
> relaxing on a beach with a drink in one hand a small team of experts
> nearby working out ways they can be nice to me
>
> I know linux will work just fine but what about X? Will X even run? If
> so will XFCE run? (seeing as how gnome probably won't)

What video card? What chipset? How much video memory on the card? This
is probably an older ISA only bus machine (perhaps VLA or EISA, though
doubtful - can't remember many PCI 486es, but that shows my slipping
memory ;), finding a 24bit video card with enough RAM to run a decent
1024x768 display may be challenging.

If you can get X up, XFCE should run (and relatively lightly at that).

Running Mozilla isn't going to be fast on a box with limited RAM. You
might reconsider your web browser of choice on an older 486 era box.

> Oh and if that's not hard enough the bios can't see partitions bigger
> than 512 MB. I've got a 3 gig and a 1 gig hard drive that I'm going to
> cut into 500 MB pieces and install. So how do I install linux on a
> system with 7 500MB partitions?

You only need your /boot partition below that 512M mark (for your
lilo/grub bootstrap). Beyond that, you should be fine once the kernel
boots and probes the chipsets/drive.

Installing to a system with 7 500M partitions is also very doable, if
that's the approach you want to take.

> Also I'm thinking of using debian because it seems to be a pretty
> minimal distro (I haven't played with it much except with knoppix
> remastering)

I recommend it, but it's really a personal decision. Xandros isn't half
bad either.

Depending on your distribution, you may have an issue getting a newer
pentium+ compiled kernel running on your mobo (depending). Most distros
have a 486 friendly boot floppy though, just in case.

> So if anyone can help me with the project it would be.. uhm ...helpful

The list is a great place for help. As for the project, it sounds like
quite a learning experience for someone getting started.

-- 
- Ian C. Blenke - Director of Service Delivery <icblenke@nks.net>
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