-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Feb 2003 08:42, Adrian Robertson wrote: > > This can't be so since i have done this myself before. > > I remember installing redhat7.0 for my old 486 by putting the 540mb hd > > into a k62-450 and then swapping the hd back. > > The 486 didn't have a CD-Rom drive. > > This worked for me at the time. > > You were lucky. Consider the possibilities of different video cards, sound > cards, and modems or network interface cards. To say nothing of different > processor. Set up linux on a new PIII because it's quick and then put the > card into an old '486 and see how far you get. Quite far. The only thing which really matters is getting the kernel up. The one aspect of the kernel which will cause problems if it's compiled with later processor extensions, otherwise, if it's compiled for plain old 386 (and most distribution kernels appear to be), then it'll boot on anything x86 which is capable of running Linux. The issues of sound cards, modems, NIC etc are all trivially solvable after the kernel has booted. Most distribution kernels compile everything including the kitchen sink as a module, so all you need to do is modprobe a few things, and edit /etc/modules (or your dists equivilent) to load 'em on startup. X used to be much tricker, but it's pretty much the same deal now. Some minor XF86Config changes and you're away laughing. No, it won't go perfectly on boot. Is is possible to easily move between sets of hardware? Yes. I've done it dozens of times. - -- This is not a .sig -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.75-6 iD8DBQE+RWu1T21+qRy4P+QRAjeLAKDJ5HG9UH8mat/KrqdvsmiGDk68IACfXK8X mlNo5MNO82ApBHf0/rTJhKI= =fBQx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
