DSL on a 486 SX25 + 8Mb RAM ?

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: DSL on a 486 SX25 + 8Mb RAM ?
started by: jerz

Posted by jerz on Feb. 17 2004,17:24

is it possible to run DSL on this dinosaure ?

thanx a lot !

Posted by John on Feb. 17 2004,18:36

The 486s in < this page > have twice as much ram, but it would be an interesting test to see if 8M is enough to run DSL from the hard drive on a 486 with a good swamp partition.

It should work for sure in text mode, and Links is a good text web browser, but I wonder how the kdrive X server plus Dillo would work for you.

Posted by Modrak on Feb. 17 2004,21:17

Pentium 100 , 64 MB DRAM, Integrated graphic card (1 MB),
210 MB Disk -\
/dev/hda1 FAT32 52MB (KNOPPIX)
/dev/hda2 SWAP 80MB
/dev/hda3 FAT32 80MB (filetool.1st,backup.gz)
Using like rdesktop client > Win2003enterprise server...but works well as Office computer...

I made alive 5 old P133 with 32 MB and 1GB disk in school. Reward was sweet

Posted by jerz on Feb. 18 2004,10:13

thanks, i will try it, but the dinausaur dont have neither CDROM drive nor ETHERNET card, how can i install it ??

thanks

Posted by skaos on Feb. 18 2004,15:16

You could try the following: take out the disk, transfer it to another pc (disconnecting all other disks), install DSL, transfer the disk back and boot. (You may have to do some post install setup to reflect the hardware on your 486.)

Posted by jerz on Feb. 18 2004,16:12

It seems to be complicated... my only other computer is a laptop

i have to plug a cdrom drive in the dinosaur... just for the install

Posted by hasty on Feb. 18 2004,19:39

You could use a parallel port connection & plip with a copy of Tomsrtbt >http://www.toms.net/rb.
Slow but it does work. (sort of linux laplink)

You'll need to read up about the plip command - Its been too long since I've used it, I honestly can't remember the details.
HTH.

Posted by DSLBR on Feb. 19 2004,18:00

Hi,

1. Install DSL in a partition /dev/hda1 (PC);
2. Optmize DSL (disable X-Window in boot, disable unnecessary service, etc);
3. Install and use partimage to save a image of /dev/hda1 (damnsmall.img);
4. Copy partimage program and image of /dev/hda1 (PC) to Zip Disk 100;
5. Boot your notebook with minidistro in floppy disk (floppix, tomrt?, etc);
6. Make a partition /dev/hda1 (ext2) in HD of notebook;
7. Modprobe ppa and mount Zipdrive;
8. Use partimage on the zip disk to restore the image damnsmall.img in the zip disk to /dev/hda1 (notebook);
9. Make a boot disk in DSL (PC);
10. Boot your notebook with boot disk of DSL;
11. Edit /etc/lilo.conf with nano and change to boot DSL by HD;
12. Reboot and enjoy.

Jaelson Lima
Brazil

Posted by DSLBR on Feb. 19 2004,18:02

I am running DSL in my HP omnibook 600C with HD PCMCIA of 340 MB and 16 MB of RAM with X-Window and mouse pop-up (obmouse).

Posted by Modrak on Feb. 19 2004,19:56

Sit to computer with CDROM and with the harddisk you will later put to that dino

Boot DSL...make two partions with cfdisk...
hda1 = FAT32 (60 Mb)
hda2 = ext2 (anything else...lets say 300MB is minimal)

Mount cdrom and hda1
Copy whole cdrom to hda1
Put diskete ( !good one ! :-)
Then "sudo dd if=/cdrom/KNOPPIX/boot.img of=/dev/fd0"
Now shutdown and transfer harddisk to dino :-)
Put the boot floppy and hard-disk into dino.
#The system is going to boot like from liveCD #
Now do "dsl-hdinstall" answer yes and say that you want to install to /dev/hda2
Do the instalation of lilo.
Reboot computer.
After re-boot , set new root passwd, login as root and do "mkswap /dev/hda1" and reboot.
Now you have full-hdinstall with 60MB of SWAP :cool:

Isn't it gr8 ?

Posted by RB on Feb. 21 2004,02:55

Just got DSL running on an NEC Versa 6050MH with 150mHz Pentium MMX and 48 megs of RAM. Haven't tried to install on the HD yet. Also read the PCMCIA Ethernet card just fine. Very nice.

Posted by vk2emq on Mar. 03 2004,06:04

I've found that 12 MB RAM is required to run DSL with XWindows - you may be able to get by with 8MB RAM and a swapfile running in terminal mode ie boot with the option

knoppix 2

The "attic ware" system I used had a high powered 486SX33 overclocked to 40 MHz with a 170 MB Hard disk - FAT formatted with a base dos system and DSL booted with loadlin - DSL files transferred from windows machine using laplink and laplink parallel port cable

vk2emq
John

Posted by davide on Mar. 03 2004,22:12

to DSLBR

and how does your pc behave. does it surf the net decently? can you use ted with sufficient speed? what pocessor is your laptop? 486?
davide