DSL on very old IBM

Forum: Laptops
Topic: DSL on very old IBM
started by: nelse

Posted by nelse on Jan. 10 2007,01:46

I have a very old IBM Thinkpad 755CE. It has a 725MB hard drive, 24 Mb of RAM, and just a floppy drive. I would like to install DSL on it. Is it possible? How would I do it?

Posted by roberts on Jan. 10 2007,03:28

I can think of at least 4 ways to install.

1. A stack of floppies, see Wiki

2. Get tomsrtbt floppy and a supported pcmcia ethercard and do a net install, see Wiki and needs internet access.

3. Remove the hard drive from the thinkpad and use an IDE adapter to install on laptop hard drive in a regular PC.

4. Get a pcmcia/CF adapter and a CF then copy the KNOPPIX folder onto the CF, then make the 2 floppy set to boot dsl from pcmcia. You can run this way and test it before you decide to touch the hard drive.

Any one of these sound interesting?

Posted by nelse on Jan. 10 2007,10:14

It has a pcmcia network card.

The floppy method sounds like a lot of work. (That's how I got Windows 95 on it), but possible.

Not sure how to remove the hard drive, but that sounds like a possibility too.

Where can find infor in the Wiki?

Nelse

Posted by roberts on Jan. 10 2007,14:36

OK. Then start reading < network install >

Posted by nelse on Jan. 11 2007,11:08

I tried BGrescue and got errors from the laptop. It seems that video portion does not work on the machine. I'll have to try using text only. Could you send me the link to the Wiki to install using floppies?

Nelse

Posted by u2musicmike on Jan. 11 2007,15:00

Here is the link for < making floppies >

I haven't tried it.

Posted by flakjakk on Jan. 18 2007,10:39

Try this link: < http://pbhj.alicious.com/slackware > - it has a lot of links for Thinkpads and Linux.

Posted by flakjakk on Jan. 18 2007,10:47

Here's another link for mwave: < http://www.mikebouckley.net/mwave/index.htm > which the 755cx uses for sound, modem etc. I have an old 755 [a cd if I remember correctly] as well, will keep track here as I would like to install dsl on it as well.

Here are two more ThinkPad sites you may find useful: < http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki > and < http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/tp-linux/. >

Good luck.....