IBM PS/1 & Linux

[cdsonic]

I have been given a IBM PS/1 and I was Just wondering if any one installed linux on one of these?
Not sure as it as no bios or settings to change.
It has windows 3.0 on it now but some files are corrupted.

 

[thornc]

What processor does it have??
Anything less than a 386, forget about it!! Linux won't work....

 

[cdsonic]

386 with 4 meg of ram and 80meg hardrive

 

[FoBoT]

freesco or mininux

but, if it is micro channel architecture, then you are unlikely to have drivers for the cards (like network cards)

don't bother

 

[cdsonic]

Sounds like a headache I might just load win 3.1 on it again.
Is it possible to get windows 3.1 to connect to my network so i can get it on the net for my daugther.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

It probably will be a headache. Maybe look at NetBSD.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: cdsonic
Sounds like a headache I might just load win 3.1 on it again.
Is it possible to get windows 3.1 to connect to my network so i can get it on the net for my daugther.

I think that requires Windows for Workgroups 3.1, but am not sure about that. You might want to consider Windows NT 3.51 instead (I'm pretty sure it has better networking and multitasking).

 

[ultimatebob]

If you put some extra memory in it, you might be able to get it to run Windows 95 half decently. Just make sure that it has a 386 DX processor, because an SX (no math co-processor) will not work. Come to think of it, I don't think that a 386 SX will work with Linux, either.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
If you put some extra memory in it, you might be able to get it to run Windows 95 half decently. Just make sure that it has a 386 DX processor, because an SX (no math co-processor) will not work. Come to think of it, I don't think that a 386 SX will work with Linux, either.

It will, linux and BSD's have fpu emulators in-kernel.

 

[cdsonic]

Windows NT 3.51 requires 12meg of ran it only has 4 meg and I do not think you can upgrades the ram

 

[sciencewhiz]

What about linux from scratch?

 

[thornc]

Sorry lost the thread.... as everyone says, just try to find some small/minimal linux distribution, Monkey Linux perhaps! I remember installing some old distro on top of dos on a 486 laptop some time ago, but I lost the name/link....doslinux or something.

Linux From Scratch is not an option it would take forever to compile it on that machine, and transfer a compilation from another system would be too complicated also...

 

[manly]

From personal experience, I can tell you Win95 runs terribly on any 386-based PC.

The general rule is 486DX2-66, 8 MB RAM minimum for Win95 but that's still not enough RAM for many apps.

It goes without saying NT would suck even worse.

Honestly, even if you could run a small *nix OS to maximize the potential of that system, it's hardly worth the effort.

For your daughter, you can load Windows 3.11 (WfWG isn't necessary unless you need MS networking) but again, 4 MB RAM isn't enough RAM for any common usage scenarios. It'll run Word 6.0 or Excel 5.0 adequately, but don't expect it to do much with a TCP/IP stack and Netscape 2.0. Even Opera 4 needs some memory to work with.