Linux for older computers
Raymond Sirois
that I'm hesitant to throw away, and so would like to put a Linux OS on
them just to see if they can still serve a purpose in life (e-mail, light
web browsing, etc.). Problem is, they won't boot from CD, and all the
distros I seem to run across are live CD distros with no boot floppy img
files. I'd hate to have to revert to something REALLY primitive (like
Redhat 5.2)!
I know there are distros out there with boot disk .img files. I just am
not finding them. I figure someone out there probably has run across
them, and might be able to steer me in the right direction. I've seen
claims that the Tecra series can ALL boot from CD, but none of the
techniques posted ever result in the thing even seeking the CD, much less
booting from it.
How about it folks... What distros are recommended for low-specification
computers that will not boot from a CD-ROM?
Thank you!
--
Ray
M. S.
A distribution that delievers images for boot floppies?
Now, such distributions got really rare these days, I guess.
But how about a boot manager that you can put onto a floppy disk, so you
can boot from CD though?
PLOP [1] is delivered as boot floppy image but cabable of booting from
CDs and USB drives (which however shouldn't be that important for the
system you mentioned).
If you can't get it working, there's still Smart BootManager [2]
whichshould work similar.
Still on the search for a distribution?
Try out TinyCore or SliTaz.
Especially the first one as it only takes around 7-10 MB to run plus the
lots of available packages for it.
The third page I putted in might also be interesting for you as it
talks about the exactly same system you're using, for running
GNU/Linux.
Good day
M. S.
[1] - http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html
[2] - http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
[3] - http://home.icequake.net/~nemesis/linuxlaptops/toshiba/tecra500cdt/
Raymond Sirois
Excellent leads, thank you for the information. I'm sure it will be very
useful
--
Ray
Patrick
> How about it folks... What distros are recommended for
> low-specification computers that will not boot from a CD-ROM?
>
> Thank you!
www.porteus.org does have to be a 32 bit machine however.
Jasen Betts
> Hey folks.. Have some VERY old laptop computers (Toshiba Tecra 500CS)
> that I'm hesitant to throw away, and so would like to put a Linux OS on
> them just to see if they can still serve a purpose in life (e-mail, light
> web browsing, etc.). Problem is, they won't boot from CD, and all the
> distros I seem to run across are live CD distros with no boot floppy img
> files. I'd hate to have to revert to something REALLY primitive (like
> Redhat 5.2)!
take the drive out and use an adaptor to connect it to some newer
hardware, install the i586 version of debian or whatever and then
put the drive back in.
If you're allergic to screwdrivers or made of pure static electrity
another option is to try something like the etherboot floppy
and set up a TFTP server with the boot image for the CD.
Lenny (Jan 2011) is the last Debian reliease to support floppy install.
you could install (a minimal version of) that and then upgrade it to
Squeeze if needed.
--
⚂⚃ 100% natural
--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---
NyteOwl
I have usually had pretty good luck using Slackware and Debian on older
hardware. Occasionally having to go back a version or two to install and
then update things.
Re the Tecra (If you've tried these - and you probably have - sorry for
the redundancy)
Press F12 and choosing the CD drive. If this doesn't work, try setting
the optical drive as the first device in the boot priority on the BIOS.
If still no joy, on power up press and hold the letter C and it may boot
into the CD drive. If none of the above try a BIOS update and repeat.
--
Obsolescence is just a lack of imagination.
M. S.
> Excellent leads, thank you for the information. I'm sure it will be very
> useful
No big deal, you're welcome :]
Danno
Raymond Sirois <rsi...@stny.rr.com> wrote:
> Hey folks.. Have some VERY old laptop computers (Toshiba Tecra 500CS)
> that I'm hesitant to throw away, and so would like to put a Linux OS on
<snip>
>
> How about it folks... What distros are recommended for
> low-specification computers that will not boot from a CD-ROM?
I run Slackware 13.1 on a P100 desktop, and 13.0 on a 486dx4 workstation,
yet, but neither are running stock specs any more. Based on the specs I'm
reading regarding your hardware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Tecra
a stock machine has very little RAM and low hard drive space. To browse
the web, you'll probably need more RAM; to install anything
semi-mainstream, you'll need either more hard drive space or an NFS
partition.
TBH, this hardware is old enough that you might want to consider using it
in a dedicated role at the command line, perhaps a server of some sort.
Web crawler, usenet server, web/ftp server, email server, squid proxy,
distributed computing node (SETI@Home). I use my P100 to be a dedicated
bittorrent servent (using rtorrent), just cap the bandwidth and use up my
monthly excess - there are any number of excellent projects/endeavours that
can benefit from our contribution of bandwidth.
I can relate to your desire to keep old hardware functioning - I've got
an old IBM TP560 (similar specs) which I can't bring myself to recycle. I
haul it out about once a year, finagle Slackware into it, then it goes
back on the shelf. I just can't be bothered to fire it the odd time I
*could* use it, because my regular workstation is perfectly capable of
doing that task and is just a mouse-click away. I used it as a gnutella
client (mutella) for a few years, serving Bach oggs from a compact flash
card through the parallel port, that was the last time it stayed on
persistently.
As for distros, others have pointed out some good ones. If you are OK
with the command line, ttylinux looks like an excellent distro for very old
iron:
http://www.minimalinux.org/ttylinux/
--
Slackware 13.1, 2.6.33.4-smp, Core i7 920
RLU #272755
Patrick
> How about it folks... What distros are recommended for
> low-specification computers that will not boot from a CD-ROM?
>
> Thank you!
SLITAZ is small enough. Get the one with Firefox pre-installed
in the image file. Here's some instructions.
Dirk Weber
> that I'm hesitant to throw away, and so would like to put a Linux OS on
> them just to see if they can still serve a purpose in life (e-mail, light
> web browsing, etc.). Problem is, they won't boot from CD, and all the
> distros I seem to run across are live CD distros with no boot floppy img
> files. I'd hate to have to revert to something REALLY primitive
500CS. Which processor, how much ram, hdd size etc.
Until some two years ago I used an elder PII8255 with at the end of that
time 288 mb ram and an 9 gbyte hdd. It run under Opensuse and still
worked fine, although a bit slow. Maybe with a smaller distribution I
could even have used it longer.
Problem then was that Openoffice.org took sooo long for literally
everything. Ok you go and get a coffie when starting up the system, but
not all the time ;-)
I then sitched over to an FSC Lifebook with PIII/833 and 512 mb ram with
an 20 gb hdd. That was quite a fine machine but got too slow with the
time as well. And it developed a problem with the display. When it is
too warm then the display begins to flicker etc. And some day it was not
any more possible to install the new Debian because the x-server did not
initialize. I sitched over to Opensuse, but with the latest releases
also no x-server.
Thus last year I bought a second hand FSC Celsius W350 with a P5, 3.2
ghz and at the moment 2 gbyte ram - no problems with that workstation
(cost me 200 EUR in a German mail order shop, 2 years guarantee).
So now I am thinking about what to do with this laptop. I would like to
use it as a music client, without x-server. I think, VLC-nox might be
the solution - but which lean distribution? I just want to be able to
listen to the music which is stored on our fileserver and in the future
to some internet radio stations (i. e. when we finally will have a
proper broadband internet connection).
In the first place I thought about Debian testing, but maybe there might
be a better solution.
Groetjes uit Arft,
Dirk
--
D. Weber
Arft, Germany (50°23'N 07°05'E)
If possible, no html mails please
Dirk Weber
> in the image file. Here's some instructions.
>
> http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst#floppy-install
>
slitaz? I might be interested to install it to my PIII/833 laptop with
512 mb ram.
Martin
option (the XFCE version). There's an excellent startup guide explaining it
all:
http://people.salixos.org/tsuren/doc/SalixStartUpGuide_13.37_draft3.pdf
J.O. Aho
support booting from USB.
--
//Aho
J.O. Aho
Not knowing anything about OP's hardware, but in general older hardware don't
support booting from USB.
Martin: Please don't set followup-to and not notify that in the post, thanks
for what you did alt.linux got the a duplicate.
--
//Aho
Eef Hartman
> I might be interested to install it to my PIII/833 laptop with
> 512 mb ram.
(Dell Dimension 4100, PIII/800 with 512 MB RAM (and a 40 GB disk)
I have been running Slackware Linux 10.2 with lots of success,
even including the KDE and/or XFCE of that time.
OK, the Dell isn't (directly) connected to the Internet so I've got
less security problems with this older Linux (it's connected thru a
local LAN to a HP Core 2 computer, which acts as firewall/router,
THAT one is running a modern up-to-date version of Slackware).
--
******************************************************************
** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. SSC/ICT **
** e-mail: E.J.M....@tudelft.nl - phone: +31-15-27 82525 **
******************************************************************
J G Miller
> Not knowing anything about OP's hardware, but in general older hardware
> don't support booting from USB.
In which case look at using a Plop Boot Manager floppy diskette
in order to boot a system on a USB device.
unruh
Since his machine does not even have a cd reader, and does still have a
floppy, the chances of its being able to boot from usb is small.
>
J G Miller
> Since his machine does not even have a cd reader, and does still have a
> floppy, the chances of its being able to boot from usb is small.
So use Plop Boot Manager Floppy Diskette.
patrick
> Op 04-09-11 20:11, Patrick schreef:
>> SLITAZ is small enough. Get the one with Firefox pre-installed in the
>> image file. Here's some instructions.
>>
>> http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst#floppy-install
>>
>>
> Could anyone be so kind to inform us about his/her experiences with
> slitaz? I might be interested to install it to my PIII/833 laptop with
> 512 mb ram.
>
> Groetjes uit Arft,
>
> Dirk
installed from there to another drive formatted as ext3. Then you
have full functionality. Like a LiveCD with selectable persistence
and a storage directory active for the user. The saved persistence
settings work, and one other feature only works off of a CD but not
really a necessary feature (make an iso). Try it.
patrick
accessing the usenet
Aragorn
as patrick wrote...
> On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:05:09 +0000, patrick wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:43:07 +0200, Dirk Weber wrote:
>>
>>> Op 04-09-11 20:11, Patrick schreef:
"Op 04-09-11 20:11 schreef Patrick..."
The translators really need to learn something about grammar. ;-)
>>>> SLITAZ is small enough. Get the one with Firefox pre-installed in
>>>> the image file. Here's some instructions.
>>>> http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst#floppy-install
>>>>
>>> Could anyone be so kind to inform us about his/her experiences with
>>> slitaz? I might be interested to install it to my PIII/833 laptop
>>> with 512 mb ram.
>>
>> Then installed from there to another drive formatted as ext3. Then
>> you have full functionality. Like a LiveCD with selectable
>> persistence and a storage directory active for the user. The saved
>> persistence settings work, and one other feature only works off of a
>> CD but not really a necessary feature (make an iso). Try it.
>
> addendum: hopefully there is a program in their repo for
> accessing the usenet
--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
patrick
Raymond Sirois
actually does not even HAVE a USB port. I've pretty well decided that
it's a lost cause. All the ideas and suggestions presented were good,
but I couldn't get a decent distro to run on the stupid thing.
--
Ray