Operating systems for really, really old computers

[darrelljon]

Wow, I used to have a Cyrix 166+ (clocked at 133Mhz) from a firm called Maple Electronics. The keyboard connection I think was called an AT connection. I used a serial mouse for a long time, when I upgraded to a Microsoft Intellimouse (with a wheel! woo) it came with a PS/2 to serial adapter which came in very handy as I quite liked the serial port. I seem to recall DSL having trouble with a serial mouse. But I ditched the PC before I properly got into Linux, and now regret it a little. In fact I was told mockingly "that's just wrong" when I recommended a serial mouse over a USB mouse for compatibility with a Windows laptop in work. Apart from appreciation for the serial port and serial mice, I can't help much, except to say I think an older version of DSL or Puppy Linux may work.

[67GTA]

I tried version 3.4? It didn't like it either. The 4GB hard drive has a butt load of bad blocks on it, so Win 95/98 won't install(unless there is a command to force it). It came out of an old shed at my neighbor's house. I'm not sure if the adapter would work with Windows or not. It has 64MB RAM. I was just playing with it. I might see if someone has a mouse I can borrow. DSL is actually not bad on it. I was surprised.

[never_stop_learning]

I have used Puppy 3.01 (frugal) and DSL 4.2.2 (frugal) on Pentium MMX 266 and PII 300 machines with as little as 128mb of RAM successfully.

Vector 5.8 works but upgrading to 256mb of RAM makes a big difference.....

[MetalheadGautham]

Since this thread is a sticky, I thought I may ask this:

I have a really really old laptop running DOS that was my first machine. Hence I have emotional attachments
Its a TwinHead Laptop. I don't know its RAM, but it is a 1992 i486E processor based book. It has a ~11" screen whose connecting wire has snapped off so I can't access the book(atleast til I fix it). I have no idea what might have been the ram or processor clockspeed.

Any idea what OS will run in it with a GUI ? And any guesses as to what its RAM and ClockSpeed might have been ?

[DJiNN]

Since this thread is a sticky, I thought I may ask this:

I have a really really old laptop running DOS that was my first machine. Hence I have emotional attachments
Its a TwinHead Laptop. I don't know its RAM, but it is a 1992 i486E processor based book. It has a ~11" screen whose connecting wire has snapped off so I can't access the book(atleast til I fix it). I have no idea what might have been the ram or processor clockspeed.

Any idea what OS will run in it with a GUI ? And any guesses as to what its RAM and ClockSpeed might have been ?

It might be worth taking a look at "Minix". I've not tried it myself yet, but i'm hoping to find a really cheap & old computer somewhere that i'll be able to try it on..... it says it'll run on a minimum of 386/486 with about 16mb Ram, which is incredibly low. So you never know..... give it a try, what have you got to lose?

Oh, and if you get a chance then please post your results as i'm sure that it would help others.

[tdrusk]

I'm going to get a laptop for $10 tomorrow.
It has 28 mb of ram. What do you suggest I put on it?

I want something that will be as fast as possible with a gui.

It has a cd drive and floppy drive.

I am thinking either feather linux of deli linux. Any preference? Which is faster?

[K.Mandla]

What other specs can you give us? 28Mb suggests it's pretty old ... DeLi Linux? DSL?

[tdrusk]

What other specs can you give us? 28Mb suggests it's pretty old ... DeLi Linux? DSL?

It's 64 mb with a 2 gig hard drive.

Right now it's running windows 98 okay.

I want it to run linux, but I can't figure out how to make it boot from a cd. Do I need to make a boot floppy or something? I looked in the bios and all I saw was an option to boot from floppy or hard drive.

[init1]

I'm going to get a laptop for $10 tomorrow.
It has 28 mb of ram. What do you suggest I put on it?

I want something that will be as fast as possible with a gui.

It has a cd drive and floppy drive.

I am thinking either feather linux of deli linux. Any preference? Which is faster?

Deli probably, especially since it's an install CD rather than a live CD. They're both great distros though.

[tdrusk]

can i use a windows floppy boot disk to boot linux? I don't even know if we still have a floppy drive...