Re: Operating systems for really, really old computers
Well I am a gluten for learning with Linux. After a trip to a local recycle station, I am a owner of one Satellite 420cds. The machine has 16meg ram. The info on the web says they were shipped with 100-120mhz processors. The 1gig HD is cleaned (no os). The unit has a cd rom but bios does not boot to cd.
I have a desktop with floppy drive to mess with. The salvage yard has more units some with floppy drives. These drives interchange so I can't run both drives at the same time.
I have toyed with the DSL floppy boot image to see if I could get my desktop to boot with it. I don't want to spend another 40bucks for the second lappy with the floppy. Hope I am being clear.
I could not get the desktop to boot via the floppy. I tried several floppies all with the same problem. After the kernel loads, I get the limited shell response. Even with the DSL disk in CD drive at the same time.
So I guess I had several bad floppies or I am doing something wrong.
My question is this. Should I install a small os to the HD, then get it to boot the new os with cd rom support? Then try an os install via the cdrom. The laptop is without modem, ethernet, or usb.
What would be my best solution. This will most likely be a toy. Possible some kids games??? If I can get a cheap ethernet pcmcia card may be able to set up as a basic server?
What road shall I take to get any os onto the HD, provided I get a floppy drive? Then swap it out with the CD rom?
I think the salvage yard has 3 more machines. One may have as much as 48meg ram, wahoo!
Was forty bucks way too much? Battery holds a charge!
Nothing is ever easy, but if it is difficult you must be doing it wrong.
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