What Linux for AT compatible with 15 MB RAM, 20 MHz CPU?

[wayne]

Is it possible to unleash the awsome power that rages within the little Packard Bell Tin Box:?:


Computer Name: IBM AT or compatible
Built-in BIOS Phoenix, Thursday, April 19, 1990
Main Processor: 80386SX
CPU Speed 20MHz [Bench Mark: 16.7MHz]
Math Co-Processor: Non-Intel 80387
Video Adapter: VESA-compatible VGA, Secondary: None
Video Memory: 256K or more

Hard Disk: 128M
Floppy Disk: 1.2MByte, 5.25" and 1.44MByte, 3.50"

DOS Memory: 639K
Extended Memory: 15,296M
Expanded Memory OK

Bus Type: ISA (PC/AT)
Serial Ports: 2
Parallel Ports: 1

Operating System: DOS 5.0

CMOS Battery: Operational
CMOS Time: Valid
Fixed Disk Controller: OK
Configured Memory: Correct
Configured Equipment: Correct
Checksum: Correct

Format: BIGDOS Fat 16

No Internet. No USB. No CD-ROM.


.

[muggins]

looking at those specs, i think you've got buckleys! how about, in decreasing order of relevance, (clutching at straws here!),

dsl linux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

deli linux? http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

blueflops? http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/

menuetos? http://www.menuetos.net/

qnx demo floppy? http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

freedos, with arachne as browser/ gui frontend?

[wayne]

looking at those specs, i think you've got buckleys! how about, in decreasing order of relevance, (clutching at straws here!),

dsl linux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

deli linux? http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

blueflops? http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/

menuetos? http://www.menuetos.net/

qnx demo floppy? http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

freedos, with arachne as browser/ gui frontend?

I've loaded DSL Live CD, and its small foot print perhaps may work. The others I'm not familar with; I'll check them out. Thanks...

Ive setup interlnk between Win95 Host and Dos/Win31 Guest, and copied LINLD.COM to Dos/Win31 C:\ "It Worked." So: What will need to happen.... download to W2K then DCC to Win95 then Interlnk to Win31............I Think

Like PUPPY says: Please stop me I'm having too much fun

[mouldy]

Possibly blueflops, qnx demo, geos, or mu linux if you want a gui and then its probably marginal. DSL if you want to run as commandline only. I think they have gotten DSL to run with gui on 486. Not sure what minimum system Puppy run in command line only requires. Somebody familiar with the "one bone" version of Puppy might know.

Since much more powerful computers are literally thrown in trash everyday anymore, and fewer and fewer early computers survive in working condition. these questions have sort of become a mute point.

win3.1 will run adequately on a 386 but not super happy, and once I got win95 installed on a 386 just to see if I could do it but boy did you ever hear hardrive churning around using swap files. It took forever to boot and was useless except for super simple games. I even took it on web out of curiosity, but boy you could read a book while a webpage loaded.

Win3.1 actually came installed on some early pentiums. It finally had all the resources it could ever want and worked quite nicely. Alas Big Bill convinced most pentium owners to 'upgrade' to win9x and all advantage was lost as win9x was lot hungrier for resources.

[buck]

not lots of gui linux for these old boxs
Have you lookeed at basic linux?

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... /baslinux/

It is only two floppys but gives xdesktop with calc and clock..I installed easy but have not added anything..yet anyway...this to dx2-66 32 meg ram but says 12 meg i386 you can add several common apps and slack4? pkg

if you get a puppy gui do tell

I had issues on that box with deli install, mulinux, slackware but got a gui with DSL installed with swap and low resourse extensions..would expect command line on anything less...was suggested on dx2 but I insisted on a gui.. the box now has basic awaiting adds but I'm eager for a puppy to play with
best of luck

[wayne]

not lots of gui linux for these old boxs
Have you lookeed at basic linux?

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... /baslinux/

It is only two floppys but gives xdesktop with calc and clock..I installed easy but have not added anything..yet anyway...this to dx2-66 32 meg ram but says 12 meg i386 you can add several common apps and slack4? pkg

if you get a puppy gui do tell

I had issues on that box with deli install, mulinux, slackware but got a gui with DSL installed with swap and low resourse extensions..would expect command line on anything less...was suggested on dx2 but I insisted on a gui.. the box now has basic awaiting adds but I'm eager for a puppy to play with
best of luck

Thanks for the input Buck, you have given me hope.

[marksouth2000]

No normal Linux kernel will run on a 386SX - no FPU.

There may be versions of Minix that will run on it though.

[wayne]

No normal Linux kernel will run on a 386SX - no FPU.

There may be versions of Minix that will run on it though.

Some design engineers spend their life dealing with lifes' abnormalities.

[marksouth2000]

Wayne:

Your barbed reply aside (actually, it was quite witty), the point is that you will need to find a distro that comes with a kernel capable of running on a 386SX. There have been a few such hacked kernels, but they are rare.

[wayne]

Marksouth2000:

Sense of humor: One must keep one to survive this mad cap world.

It's good to read that you posess a good one.

Also, do I detect a glimmer of possibility my quest may not be entirely an exercise in futility!

[wayne]

muggins:


Booted menuetos on hp 500M and what an acheivement the menuetos floppy is. Thanks for putting me onto menuetos.

The latest release of menuetos requires 32M and Packard has 16M. Provided Packard can support 32M and cheap simms are about, I may increase its ram. Maxing out its memory should help its speed problem too.

Its not Linux but programmed in 32/64 bit machine language menuetos is a piece of work the programmer may be proud of.

One may ask, why are you doing this? Because it's fun and for the computer savy that many of you will freely share. It doesn't get much better than that. Also, the Packard and I go back along way [Twenty Years]. Packard is my first computer. I still have its original cardboard boxes in which carried Packard home. It saw me through several engineering courses that required FORTRAN solution. It's family.

[jason.b.c]

What about good old FreeDOS...????

http://www.freedos.org/

and then to have a fancy GUI go get Seal 2.0

http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/download.php

No Internet. No USB. No CD-ROM.

Well i can understand the no USB part and possibly no CD-rom ( or can one be added..? ) , But the internet part can be solved with an external modem , You can get on the internet with FreeDOS...

[wayne]

What about good old FreeDOS...????

http://www.freedos.org/

and then to have a fancy GUI go get Seal 2.0

http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/download.php

No Internet. No USB. No CD-ROM.

Well i can understand the no USB part and possibly no CD-rom ( or can one be added..? ) , But the internet part can be solved with an external modem , You can get on the internet with FreeDOS...

Jason.b.c.
Your points are good points indeed,
and I'll investigate each of them.
The Packard has an internal 14.4 Hayes
modem set for dial up. Years ago, I had it
on line, very slow. I found only two websites
[microsoft and google] that allowed the browzer
to connect. But it was instructional and fun.

[muggins]

yes,

with menuetos it's amazing how much they can cram onto a floppy. ( incidentally i can't recall whether i first came across puppylinux via barry's links on the menuetos site, or via tinyapps.org?).

another amazing floppy creation was the qnx-demo disk which had a little graphical browser you could surf the net with.

blueflops is a 2 disk linux, and there's also terry loveall's 1 disk xwoaf.

[PaulBx1]

Say, I have a Zenith Z81 "laptop" bought new, 8088 processor, 640k ram (I think), no hard drive, two 720k floppies, monochrome character-based screen. Will Puppy run on that?

[wayne]

yes,

with menuetos it's amazing how much they can cram onto a floppy. ( incidentally i can't recall whether i first came across puppylinux via barry's links on the menuetos site, or via tinyapps.org?).

another amazing floppy creation was the qnx-demo disk which had a little graphical browser you could surf the net with.

blueflops is a 2 disk linux, and there's also terry loveall's 1 disk xwoaf.

muggins:

I have the qnx-demo blue screen up on the monitor of the win95 machine the forum recently helped to install Puppy213 on. BTW created an Autoexec.bat file with LINLD.COM command line for the boot floppy.
Automation is sure great thanks to you and others for the help. As you posted, qnx is quite amazing. QNX would not download the modern zip package but did dowload Network v305 zip. Well onto linux blue flops.

[muggins]

maybe that particular link for qnx modem floppy is dead, but it would be out "there", somewhere...you would just have to google for it.

[amish]

as for a dos gui that is 100x better than seal... http://ozonegui.net/

the only way i know to get online with dos is to use arachne. then if you want, add lynx and jpirc (not in that order.) they probably won't work from seal, of course. or ozone.

[jason.b.c]

the only way i know to get online with dos is to use arachne. then if you want, add lynx and jpirc (not in that order.) they probably won't work from seal, of course. or ozone.

not really , there are alot more dialers out there for dos...

http://www.opus.co.tt/dave/indexall.htm#internet