At Damn Last

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: At Damn Last
started by: racerx1313

Posted by racerx1313 on Nov. 01 2003,22:16

[I]I have a pair of Dell Latitude XP notebooks running 486DX 100 processors that were given to me when I performed some volunteer work. I have been trying on and off for over a year to get Linux to run on them with a GUI. It has been made difficult by the fact that the units don't have CDroms or enough memory to support an FTP install. I've managed to install a few distros using a boot disk and an image on a partition, but could never get X working. Today I decided to see what I could do with DSL 0.4.10. I connected the notebook HD to a Pentium powered decktop and booted from the DSL CD I selected XVESA server at 640x480 and 16bit color as this is the only resolution my notebooks will support. Once up and running I followed the instuctions for HD install and then installed Firebird. I rebooted the desktop to be sure the HD install had succeeded. I transferred the HD to the notebook and tried to boot it, but lilo was not working properly. I rebooted with a Vector Linux boot floppy and to my great surprise was able get DSL to boot GUI and all. I tried to get on the net and was informed that I had no connection. I tried to run netcardconfig, but it said "no supported network adapters detected" bummer. I tried running liloconfig a few times, but it was not working, until I ran fdisk /mbr. When it booted for the first time without the help of a floppy, it detected and properly configured my PCMCIA network card

Damn Spiffy Linux I say. I'm posting with it.

Posted by davide on Nov. 02 2003,13:00

well done!
successes like yours are very good for the mood..
is it working well?
does it run faster than winblows 95 or 3.11 ? (I suppose there was such an OS on that laptop)? do you surf the net fast enought? even w/ firebird?

thanx for aswering