This is a 1995-vintage machine (guessing by the BIOS copyright date on
the bottom) with a Pentium 75 and 16 MB of RAM (originally 8 until I
found a loose RAM expansion card under the floppy disk, heh heh). It
has no CDROM, no USB, no Ethernet. It does have a floppy disk, a
parallel port*, and two PCMCIA slots. My preferred method of
installation is a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA sleeve, both for space
and speed reasons. However, memory, or lack thereof is proving a
problem for debian-installer. I have tried sarge, etch, and lenny
hd-media images and they all fail in various stages of the kernel boot,
most of the time before userland is started, sometimes panicking,
sometimes just hanging. The same applies to the floppies from Etch
(have not tried Sarge) but the Lenny installer does start in low-memory
mode, but I am having issues figuring out how to get network drivers
and/or packages onto this machine--all I have in the way of PCMCIA
(e.g. 16-bit) networking hardware is a D-Link DWL-650 rev.P, which
requires the HostAP driver and loadable firmware, neither of which are
included with the Lenny installer.

Anyone have any ideas of what I can do with this machine, including
other Linux distributions and/or operating systems (e.g. FreeDOS)?
Ultimately I'd like to get Debian in some form on the machine but
right now it looks like I can't really afford to be picky.

I'd rather not spend too much money on this machine, none preferably.
It's just an idle hobby, and I already spend enough money on my other
machines as it is. So in other words, I'd like to work with what I
have, if at all possible.

* I have a "LapLink" parallel cable suitable for PLIP...I _think_...if I
didn't give it away...I'd rather not go rooting in the attic for that
if at all possible.

--
Andrew J. Barr

Woke up in my clothes again this morning,
don't know exactly where I am...


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On Sunday 17 June 2007 8:36 pm, Andrew J. Barr wrote:
> This is a 1995-vintage machine (guessing by the BIOS copyright date on
> the bottom) with a Pentium 75 and 16 MB of RAM (originally 8 until I
> found a loose RAM expansion card under the floppy disk, heh heh). It
> has no CDROM, no USB, no Ethernet. It does have a floppy disk, a
> parallel port*, and two PCMCIA slots. My preferred method of
> installation is a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA sleeve, both for space
> and speed reasons. However, memory, or lack thereof is proving a
> problem for debian-installer. I have tried sarge, etch, and lenny
> hd-media images and they all fail in various stages of the kernel boot,
> most of the time before userland is started, sometimes panicking,
> sometimes just hanging. The same applies to the floppies from Etch
> (have not tried Sarge) but the Lenny installer does start in low-memory
> mode, but I am having issues figuring out how to get network drivers
> and/or packages onto this machine--all I have in the way of PCMCIA
> (e.g. 16-bit) networking hardware is a D-Link DWL-650 rev.P, which
> requires the HostAP driver and loadable firmware, neither of which are
> included with the Lenny installer.
>
> Anyone have any ideas of what I can do with this machine, including
> other Linux distributions and/or operating systems (e.g. FreeDOS)?
> Ultimately I'd like to get Debian in some form on the machine but
> right now it looks like I can't really afford to be picky.
>
> I'd rather not spend too much money on this machine, none preferably.
> It's just an idle hobby, and I already spend enough money on my other
> machines as it is. So in other words, I'd like to work with what I
> have, if at all possible.
>
> * I have a "LapLink" parallel cable suitable for PLIP...I _think_...if I
> didn't give it away...I'd rather not go rooting in the attic for that
> (have not tried Sarge) but the Lenny installer does start in low-memory
> mode, but I am having issues figuring out how to get network drivers
> and/or packages onto this machine--all I have in the way of PCMCIA
> (e.g. 16-bit) networking hardware is a D-Link DWL-650 rev.P, which
> requires the HostAP driver and loadable firmware, neither of which are
> included with the Lenny installer.
>
> Anyone have any ideas of what I can do with this machin
> if at all possible.
>
> --
> Andrew J. Barr
>
> Woke up in my clothes again this morning,
> don't know exactly where I am...
Tricky situation, but can you do a floppy boot to netinst? I think this will
work for you if you create an additional floppy disk with your network card's
drivers/firmware on it. During the installation process, exit to a prompt to
get the drivers/firmware from the floppy.

--
Matthew K Poer <matthewpoer@gmail.com>
Location: GA, USA Web: http://matthewpoer.freehostia.com
GnuPG Public Key: 4DD0A9A6 Keyserver: subkeys.pgp.net

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On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 08:36:20PM -0400, Andrew J. Barr wrote:
> This is a 1995-vintage machine (guessing by the BIOS copyright date on
> the bottom) with a Pentium 75 and 16 MB of RAM (originally 8 until I
> found a loose RAM expansion card under the floppy disk, heh heh). It
> has no CDROM, no USB, no Ethernet. It does have a floppy disk, a
> parallel port*, and two PCMCIA slots. My preferred method of
> installation is a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA sleeve, both for space
I have a toshiba libretto (P-1 166/32mb). Other than an 2gb->10gb
upgrade, it works ok with twm, firefox, but is not a speed daemon.
I used a pcmcia cdrom, dos, and RH 7.1 and loadlin.exe a few years ago.
Not fun.

I'd suggest: take out the 2.5" hd, get a 2.5"->3.5" adapter (less than
$10 US), put it in any PC, and install woody or sarge. And report back
if you can get either of these to work. This is the easiest way I can
thing of. I setup plip afterwards for fun, and it worked to network
between my desktop and laptop.
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On 06/17/07 19:36, Andrew J. Barr wrote:
> This is a 1995-vintage machine (guessing by the BIOS copyright date on
> the bottom) with a Pentium 75 and 16 MB of RAM (originally 8 until I
> found a loose RAM expansion card under the floppy disk, heh heh). It
> has no CDROM, no USB, no Ethernet. It does have a floppy disk, a
> parallel port*, and two PCMCIA slots. My preferred method of
> installation is a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA sleeve, both for space
[snip]
> Anyone have any ideas of what I can do with this machine, including
> other Linux distributions and/or operating systems (e.g. FreeDOS)?
> Ultimately I'd like to get Debian in some form on the machine but
> right now it looks like I can't really afford to be picky.

NetBSD might be what you need.

--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!


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