Shawn,
After reading this mail i've got a question. I've tried lot's of time to let
an 'old' 486 with 16 mb talk linux. Until now i'm not very succesfull.
With multiple distributions i've tried but unfortenately unsuccesfull.
The problems arise at booting time, when the kernel itself is loaded. Almost
al of the time, i get kernel panics. Booting from flop, cd or disk does not
matter. all fail.
I've tried to compile different kernels but all with the same result.
I'm not able to read all those error messages appearing when 'hanging' but
maybe you can give me some hints..
the machine is an ICL 486, on-board video, 16mb, a temporary disk (want to
boot via ethernet which physically works except for the kernel), and monitor
attached.
I just wanted to make a simple terminal for monitoring and config use for my
linux server which is in an (cold) different room.
All info is welcome,
Ron Jochems
PD1ACF
-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn T. Rutledge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 1:37 AM
Subject: Re: old PCs
>On Tue, Apr 18, 2000 at 09:02:02AM +1000, Barrett, Peter G wrote:
>> I Have an old DX2-66, hda=124Mb hdb=408Mb ESS soundcard and thought that
>> rather than just dump it I could devote it to soundmodem AX25.
>> Am I dreaming?
>> If I'm not I would be interested to hear your ideas on the best best way
to
>> set it up, ie what to include, what to leave out.
>> There must be a lot of surplus equipment similar to this and it seems so
>> wasteful to just ditch them.
>> Hams are noted for their resourcefulness, and Linux is noted for it's
>> flexibility. Computers are noted for their obsolescence.
>> What do you think.
>
>I think it's a great idea although I don't know much about how much
>CPU power the soundmodem needs. Let me know if it works, I might do
>it too.
>
>I continue to use 486's for a few chores... one was supposed to be the
>"bedroom Xterm" but I find I don't need it for that very often; its
>other purpose is to run my X10 controller. Of course all the machines
>run distributed.net in their spare time so no CPU cycles are wasted.
>Another 486 has a BIOS that's unusually friendly to weird IDE devices,
>like my compact FLASH adapter, and my SunDisk adapter. So I use it
>mainly for transferring data to and from those devices. Another 486
>has a "vintage" slackware on it, since I have trouble compiling old
>kernels on modern distros. I'm working on a low-memory setup for my
>386 touchscreen machines, and libc5 with an old kernel seems to be the
>way to go to save memory. And another 486 gets used for some Turbo C
>DOS development I was working on for a while (another thin client idea
>I had... if I succeed, even 286's might become useful again as thin
>graphics terminals). It also is the only machine in the house that still
>has Win95 on it.
>
>So yes, there are plenty of uses for them, and I don't understand anybody
>who'd throw out a 486, especially one with a DX2 processor.
>
>I wish there was a good mechanism to get our surplus PC's exported to
>poorer countries where they are scarce.
>
>Just to keep it on topic... for several years my packet station and quite
>a few other applications were all running on a 386. It would still be
>more than adequate for those tasks but I'm running more stuff on my
>gateway than I used to so now it's a dual Pentium 100.
>
>--
> _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> __) | | \________________________________________________________________
>Get money for spare CPU cycles at http://www.ProcessTree.com/?sponsor=5903
