I've found an old IBM OmniBook 800 and am curious whether I can get it going again. (Currently it boots either Windows 95 or some then-contemporary version of Slackware.) The CDROM is external (SCSI, I think) and the machine won't boot from it, so it'd require a boot floppy. Any suggestions? Or is CentOS entirely the wrong Linux to be thinking about for this?
Bart Schaefer wrote:> I've found an old IBM OmniBook 800 and am curious whether I can get it > going again. (Currently it boots either Windows 95 or some > then-contemporary version of Slackware.) The CDROM is external (SCSI, > I think) and the machine won't boot from it, so it'd require a boot > floppy. Any suggestions? Or is CentOS entirely the wrong Linux to be > thinking about for this?True, this is out of my league, and I'm just brainstorming, but ... Does it have a pcmcia slot? Does anyone make a USB-pcmcia adapter? Set up a usb stick to boot from. Good? Or, am I totally off base? :)
Bart Schaefer wrote:> I've found an old IBM OmniBook 800 and am curious whether I can get it > going again. (Currently it boots either Windows 95 or some > then-contemporary version of Slackware.) The CDROM is external (SCSI, > I think) and the machine won't boot from it, so it'd require a boot > floppy. Any suggestions? Or is CentOS entirely the wrong Linux to be > thinking about for this?What are you planning to do with it? Given the current prices on much faster/lighter laptops I'm not sure how much time you want to waste on an old one that isn't going to be a good GUI workstation anyway. If it boots from USB or a floppy that transfers bios control to the CDROM you can probably make the install work. Centos3.x might be more lightweight and efficient if you don't need current desktop apps. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Stephen John Smoogen
2009-Mar-01 19:59 UTC
[CentOS] Best CentOS to install on *old* laptop?
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote:> I've found an old IBM OmniBook 800 and am curious whether I can get it > going again. ?(Currently it boots either Windows 95 or some > then-contemporary version of Slackware.) ?The CDROM is external (SCSI, > I think) and the machine won't boot from it, so it'd require a boot > floppy. ?Any suggestions? ?Or is CentOS entirely the wrong Linux to be > thinking about for this?Its hard for us scavengers to do, but sometimes the better question is: Is this hardware worth putting Linux on? First I couldn't find an IBM Omnibook but I found HP ones... http://www.gbnet.net/~richard/digital/omni.html Basically, the system is pretty low end and maybe would run CentOS-2.1 or 3.9 but would be pretty much pushing it to do so. The hardware is circa 1995 or so and would probably want something from the Red Hat 5.2/6.2 days versus even CentOS-2.1. Long term you are probably going to want a different OS like Damn Small Linux as the Omnibook looks like it hs 64 or less MB. http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=8;t=20595 Most of the time, I find that the batteries are going and non-replaceable so I find that sending them to the computer recycling center better than trying to put something on it. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"
At Sun, 1 Mar 2009 10:09:47 -0800 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:> > I've found an old IBM OmniBook 800 and am curious whether I can get it > going again. (Currently it boots either Windows 95 or some > then-contemporary version of Slackware.) The CDROM is external (SCSI, > I think) and the machine won't boot from it, so it'd require a boot > floppy. Any suggestions? Or is CentOS entirely the wrong Linux to be > thinking about for this?I had no problems running WhiteBox 3.0 (same as CentOS 3.0) on a Toshiba laptop. It was a 586 box (P133), so I used the 586 kernels. I did have CentOS 4.3 on it at one point (but could not get the ISA-flavor sound card to work). It has 144meg of RAM and I put something like a 20gig hard drive in it. If you have some sort of functional Linux install on it (even an old Slackware), and have a supported network card for it, it should be possible to contrive to do a network install, esp. if you have another box also running Linux and capable of running NFS.> _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > >-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/