Oldest/crappiest Linux computer you have

[tlyons]

What's the oldest computer you run Linux on?

<snipped from another post of mine>
Lotsa people like to post their rigs in their sig. I usually take a quick look to see if it's recent looking... if it is, I stop reading. What I really like to see are people running Linux on old, crappy hardware. That's where its at.

None of my computers are new, and it's a beautiful thing.
</snip>

If you've got a bucket of bolts that still works, I'd like to hear about it. Garage sale finds, e-Bay acquisitions, orphaned systems... What is it? Sparc? Compact Mac? Old x86? What did you install on it? Desktop system, server, router, whatever (why buy from Cisco when you can make it yourself?). Inquiring minds want to know.

Pictures would be a plus, too.

- T.

[Sgood1971]

I have a 90MHZ Toshiba laptop w/48 MB RAM running Damn Small Linux just fine.

[psi42]

60 Mhz Pentium I (my dialup router)

33Mhz 486-SX IBM Thinkpad

[bsm2001]

I just got 2 free P2 400 Compaq Proliant 800 servers. So far only 1 is working by combining parts. I have to buy a $20 CPU Power module and then the one will be a dual proc.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

25mhz 486 Compaq Aero laptop.

8MB RAM, 270MB hard drive, 10BT PCMCIA NIC.

That's about the lowest end machine that I'd even try to install Linux on. If I got brave, I'd try to dig up a 386 machine, or try to shoehorn ELKS Linux onto my 8088-powered IBM PC-XT

[tlyons]

Originally posted by psi42
60 Mhz Pentium I (my dialup router)

33Mhz 486-SX IBM Thinkpad

Both running Slackware (need I ask?). What versions?

- T.

[tlyons]

Originally posted by bsm2001
I just got 2 free P2 400 Compaq Proliant 800 servers. So far only 1 is working by combining parts. I have to buy a $20 CPU Power module and then the one will be a dual proc.

What does it (or will it) run?

[bsm2001]

Thought I would Run WIN2k3 J/K

Probably MDK. Like my other servers. It's gonna replace 1 of them. I booted Mepis in Gui so I know everything is working. I'll have some Parts left and post them as soon as I can.

[Icarus]

P133 Compaq Deskpro with 44M of upgraded memory



Running Gentoo baby!
No GUI, a headless gnump3d/file server with a 4gb / drive
and a 20GB /home and a 40gb /stuff

Just got myself a 'new' PII that I'm going to load SUSE on when I get the time (err, feel like it) for testing

[sharth]

Originally posted by Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
25mhz 486 Compaq Aero laptop.

8MB RAM, 270MB hard drive, 10BT PCMCIA NIC.

That's about the lowest end machine that I'd even try to install Linux on. If I got brave, I'd try to dig up a 386 machine, or try to shoehorn ELKS Linux onto my 8088-powered IBM PC-XT

On the debian mailing lists a while back, it was determined that there was i think 3 people that used debian on 386's. :-p

[je_fro]

Here's my Sparcstation 20:

cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu : Texas Instruments, Inc. - SuperSparc-(II)
fpu : SuperSparc on-chip FPU
promlib : Version 3 Revision 2
prom : 2.25
type : sun4m
ncpus probed : 2
ncpus active : 2
Cpu0Bogo : 84.99
Cpu1Bogo : 85.19
MMU type : TI Viking/MXCC
contexts : 65536
nocache total : 4194304
nocache used : 356608
CPU0 : online
CPU1 : online

Here's my firewall:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 5
model : 2
model name : Pentium 75 - 200
stepping : 12
cpu MHz : 166.195
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : yes
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8
bogomips : 331.77

[ZenelithCalling]

eMachines eMonster P3 500 with 256 mb of that ol' RAM, 13 gb master and 20 gb slave. 'tis dual booted w/ w2k and Ubuntu. Its currently my Oracle abuse box for my database classes.

[psi42]

Originally posted by tlyons
Both running Slackware (need I ask?). What versions?

- T.

The 60Mhz machine is running a reasonably slim install of Slack 10.0

My 486 laptop is running zipslack from 10.0, but also using the 2.2.19 kernel. For some reason, I couldn't get 2.4 to work with the UMSDOS filesystem, which unfortunately was my only option in this case, as I had to do a complex install without the use of a floppy or CDROM..... (not fun ).

[Sepero]

Originally posted by psi42
My 486 laptop is running zipslack from 10.0, but also using the 2.2.19 kernel. For some reason, I couldn't get 2.4 to work with the UMSDOS filesystem, which unfortunately was my only option in this case, as I had to do a complex install without the use of a floppy or CDROM..... (not fun ).

My first distro was Zipslack on umsdos. I later found that umsdos has problems, one of which is it doesn't like symlinks very much when compiling. Have you ever tried converting it to a real Linux FS?
# cp -a /fromdir /todir

Anyway, the oldest box in this house is my father's workstation. I've got him dualbooting MS XP and Ubuntu.
500 Mhz AMD
192 Sdram
13gb HD

[psi42]

Originally posted by Sepero
Have you ever tried converting it to a real Linux FS?
# cp -a /fromdir /todir

I wish I could, but the hard drive has only one partition, and I have no means of repartitioning it and still being able to restore the OS. I have no CDROM, the floppy is broken, and the HD is not a "standard" laptop hard drive so I can't use an adapter to plug it into a desktop motherboard.

So, for the moment at least, I am stuck with UMSDOS. I don't use the thing much, though.... (no battery life...)