Hello,
> "The 2MB system is not much fun to work with, of course, but 8MB are plenty
> for a little service machine (mine has 2 modems, ISDN, SCC-card, Ethernet, 2
> plip lines, and acts as answering machine and mail server for a couple of
> people)."
>
> Sounds exactly like what I want to do to 'get my feet wet' and learn Linux. I
> have an old Dell 486 25MHz 8Mb with two 1 GB hard drives. I started an
> installation of SuSe Linux and all went well until I had to figure out what
> packages I needed to load since the 2 GB is way too small to do a full
> install.
Yes, for the new SuSE your Dell may be too small. SuSE is really *big*. I'd
suggest using something like Slackware or Debian instead. Also, most people
recommend using the kernel 2.0.x series on older computers with less than,
let's say, 32 MB RAM. For ham use, kernel 2.0.38 will do best.
> I would like to configure it to do what Kai's machine is doing and
> plug into my Win95-SR2 network with the other two "big" machines. I would
> really like it to be an answering machine, fax machine, print spooler, two
> multi-PPP modems (one 56K and one 28.8K), Ethernet, firewall, and DOS emulator
> (to run a compiler for PIC programs). There will only be one user - me.
Should be possible as a whole if you do not mind having to wait sometimes
when that little machine has got some load.
If you do the faxing with analog modems it should work well. For an answering
machine I have no experiences, maybe someone else has already got this to
work. All the other services you mentioned should work there without problems.
> 1. Is the little 486 box too small/slow to be useable for anything or can I
> do some or all of the above listed things with it?
Have a look at smaller distributions or, better to say, distributions that
allow you to do a really minimal install. If you have a bigger Linux machine
to work with and to compile your software you may even get along with one of
the single-floppy distributions, simply copying them onto the harddisk.
Maybe, www.linuxrouter.org is interesting here.
> 2. If it is useable, would someone be kind enough to give me some
> assistance on what I really need to load and what I can drop?
At first, you do not need the X Window System. Also, you may drop a lot of
the documentation if you have it available elsewhere, eg. on a CD.
If you can compile programs on another machine, you can even drop gcc and
binutils.
Single-floppy distributions like tomsrtbt (www.toms.net/rb) may be a good
example for minimalistic Linux systems.
Cheers,
Gerd
--
Gerd Roethig
Universit�t Leipzig, Medizinische Klinik u. PK I
Johannisallee 32, 04103 Leipzig
Tel. (0341) 97 12622, Fax (0341) 97 12659
