User Feedback :: How low can you go?

That's awesome! I was proud of my Presario 1020, but that beats it hands down. Now I gotta scope out a new 486DX. ...

I am using a P166 Laptop with 96 Mb of RAM. This is my main machine nowadays, as my old 500Mhz iMac (running Ubuntu) is in need of repairs.

I have an old Compaq in my storage room. It's a 486 I think, with 4Mb of RAM. I will drag it out one of these days, and install DSL, and see if I can get it working (on the net)

Currently it is running Windows 3.1. This was the first machine that I used on the net and was in use before they had graphics on the web. I am betting that it will still work though

Quote (skaos @ Feb. 14 2006,05:54)

You can partition the disk from DSL with: cfdisk /dev/hdc (or /dev/hda)
I don't think you need a 128 MB swap partition, it should be ok with 64 (or maybe even 32).
You could try to boot with this: dsl root=/dev/hdc1 ro
BTW, /dev/hdc is the secondary master and when you put it into the ibm it will most likely be primary master (dev/hda) which may explain the error message.

I've tried your advice but the LILO 22.5.7.2 Boot menu says:

No such image. [Tab] shows a list.

But when I hit the [Tab] key nothing happens.

Any idea?

1)

If you yank the hard drive and connect it to a newer computer, you need to make sure that the hard drive is configured as the same IDE location as it was in your original computer.

So if the drive was set up as the PRIMARY MASTER IDE DRIVE in your old computer, you need to set it up as the PRIMARY MASTER IDE DRIVE in your new computer before you do the install.

2) In general, partitioning programs only modify the partition table. They do not actually FORMAT your newly created partitions. Partition Magic may be the exception, but I don't own it so I don't know for sure.

Usually, in Linux you would make your partitions with a program called cfdisk. For a primary master drive, in a terminal window or in textmode you type:

sudo su
cfdisk /dev/hda

and then make your partitions and write the new table. Say for example, you create a Linux partition (to be EXT2) at location #2 and a Linux swap partition at location #3.
To format them, you type:

mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hda2
mkswap /dev/hda3
swapon

and then you can do the full HD installation to /dev/hda2

original here.