[Gllug] retro computing

[Mike Brodbelt]

Steve Nelson wrote:
> On 10/5/05, Brad Cahoon <kedikebab at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am about to receive a 386 laptop which I would like to idealy get X
>>running on, having trolled the internet not much came up. I thought the
>>guru's here must be running bleading edge software on dinosaur hardware just
>>for the fun of it. any comments on distros etc greatly received.
> 
> 
> Firstly, I can see why it might be both fun and frustrating to get
> something running on a very old piece of kit.  However, I think its
> going to be a very tough job finding something current and secure
> enough that will get going on a 386 laptop.  That's not to suggest you
> shouldn't have a go.

I did it a few of years ago out of interest. Installed slackware from
floppy on a 386/33 with 5Mb RAM and a 105Mb Alps Electric hard disk. It
was....interesting. Slow, but interesting. I recompiled the kernel
"optimised" for a 386 with all the vital drivers built in and nothing
else, to save as much memory as possible. I think it took about 10 hours
or so to compile a 2.0 kernel.

Today it'd be harder - many distros have installers compiled with the
486 instruction set assumed, so not all will even run on a 386. Of
course, the star prize has to be getting Gentoo running on it, then
doing an emerge of Gnome. To win, you have to outlive the compile :-)

Mike.
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