PDA

View Full Version : Tiny OS


flipflow
August 10th, 2007, 02:31 PM
On my new laptop feisty is running along happily, but the other day an old friend returned my really old, no ancient, no methuselaic Pentium I laptop.

Now, that thing had bits and pieces fall off and die on me even before I gave it to him 10 years ago. It hasn't improved much since.

Biggest problem: forget USB, forget DVD, forget CD. They were never part of the specs, and the PCMCIA slot with the modem has gone to the next world. The only port that is left in working condition is an 3,5 inches disk drive that might or might not still be in order.

But I have no way of checking, because he lost the 10 disks with Windows 95? on that used to run semi-reliably on the old beast.

Now, can any of you guys think of a free OS solution that comes on 3,5in disks or could be reasonably transfered on such and could be working on a Pentium I, 16 MB memory and virtually no hard disk space to speak of?!

You guessed, it's a retro project and the love of a long lost child.

A good forum or website for such things would be welcome, too.

LaRoza
August 10th, 2007, 03:05 PM
http://users.sunet.com.au/~tsn/floppy_linux.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Linux (Look to the floppy section)

http://injector.sourceforge.net/

goumples
August 10th, 2007, 04:03 PM
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/

did a quick search and found this.. sounds interesting

init1
August 10th, 2007, 10:55 PM
Menuet- Lots of apps, fits on one floppy
FreeDOS- Like MS-DOS but better. Supports FAT32. The floppy image is called "balder.img". It is in the Knoppix CD.
Basic Linux- Based on Slackware. 2 floppies.
http://www.menuetos.net/
http://www.freedos.org/
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/

tgalati4
August 11th, 2007, 12:09 AM
I put Damn Small Linux on an old HP Omnibook by removing the drive, sticking it in a an old P1 desktop machine (with an IDE-to-notebook-adapter-$6) and installing DSL to the notebook drive. Put the drive back into the notebook and voila', a working DSL on an otherwise doorstop.

flipflow
August 12th, 2007, 10:24 AM
Thanx guys, basic linux was the best sollution.

init1
August 12th, 2007, 07:14 PM
Thanx guys, basic linux was the best sollution. I'm glad you've found a solution. :D

~~Tito~~
August 14th, 2007, 04:46 AM
Can you show pics of this massive(old laptops are) brick of abacus. And the spots that don't have anything.