Old 486 computer & external CD reader advice needed

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Wed Feb 1 20:02:25 UTC 2006


On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 13:29, Mike McCarty wrote:

> I don't know of any which can run on a 486 in 16MB of RAM and no swap.
> I've got a 486 (actually an AMD586) which I'd like to run Knoppix
> or the like on. It has 16MB of RAM, but very little hard disc. It
> has a 3GB HD partitioned into two FAT16 partitions, one of them
> full, the other with 40MB free. I'd like to run almost any version
> of Linux on there, for purposes of file transfer. It has an old
> 10 Base 2, but I could probably put a 100 Base T on there, as it
> has one PCI slot (IIRC).

This would be the obvious place to start:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
but you might be able to get knoppix to load if you don't
try to run X.  Try 'knoppix 2' at the boot prompt with as
old a version as you can find.  If that works, you might
be able to run as an xterminal with your desktop elsewhere
by starting X with 'X -query server' where server is a
more powerful box with XDCMP enabled.  You'd have a better
chance with 32M ram, though.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com





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