Let start a ...

[Richard Craneum]

Scavenger hunt and find out who can build a good Linux box with the cheapest stuff that can be found laying around your house.

I am starting with a Packard Bell 486 DX2, 66MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HDD, Cirrus Logic Video Chip set, Yamaha sound card 12x CD ROM drive.

So far I got Peanut 7.4 dual boot with W95.

Scrapheap Challenge here I go!!

[Rooscow]

Ok RC, here we go!!!!!

300 PSU, Super P54VL-PCI AT motherboard, Pentium 3.3 v 180 MHz overdrive CPU, 72 Meg 60ns SIMM, Adaptec 2940 SCSI I/O Card, Soundblaster ISA card, 3 IBM Ultrastar 4.5GB 3.5" LP SCSI HD, 1 Seagate ST32171 2 GB 3.5" SCSI HD, ATI AIW pro 4 Meg PCI Video card, Plextor 16x SCSI cartridge CD, burnt-out modem and an old 10-Base-T NIC. Windows 98 Plus upgraded from Windows for Workgroups and DOS 6.0.

[Richard Craneum]

Originally posted by rooscow:
Ok RC, here we go!!!!!

300 PSU, Super P54VL-PCI AT motherboard, Pentium 3.3 v 180 MHz overdrive CPU, 72 Meg 60ns SIMM, Adaptec 2940 SCSI I/O Card, Soundblaster ISA card, 3 IBM Ultrastar 4.5GB 3.5" LP SCSI HD, 1 Seagate ST32171 2 GB 3.5" SCSI HD, ATI AIW pro 4 Meg PCI Video card, Plextor 16x SCSI cartridge CD, burnt-out modem and an old 10-Base-T NIC. Windows 98 Plus upgraded from Windows for Workgroups and DOS 6.0.

You might wnat to give a try to Peanut Linux 9.2, or Slackware 8.0 Mandrake 9.0 or Red Hat 8.0 Never playes with SuSE 7.3 so I do not know what to expect.

Get your distro here...
http://www.linux.org/dist/

or here...

http://www.linuxiso.org/

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/

http://www.distrowatch.com/

UCLA, Goergia Tech and University of Minnesota are good mirror sites.

[Richard Craneum]

looking at your specs, if you load MDK choose a desktop enviroment like GNOME or IceW. KDE is too big I believe for your CPU so it will go a bit slow. Now, 2GB is kind of small so when you install it do not choose all the bells and wistles you will run out of room. Can you bump the HDD for something bigger? I am just using MDK as an example. RH will ask the same qustions.

[Rooscow]

Thanks for the info RC.

I have four drives, three of them 4.5 gig. I just have to play with the SCSI ID to change the boot drive. I didn't even include my external 4 gig because it whines like a baby when it is running. The machine came with 16 Megs of memory and only a 1 Gig drive ten years ago when it was state of the art. I've tweaked it over the years and wish I had that cash today, boy what a machine I could build.

I treat my computers like my cars, when I am done with them, they are defintely done and useless. (anybody want an IBM PS2-286?)

You said previously that Linux doesn't like the ATI cards. Is that going to be a problem? I was hoping that using the Adaptec SCSI card was going to be OK. I never had an IDE drive in this machine, just an old 250 meg tape backup that was replaced with a 4mm DAT SCSI device later.

[Rooscow]

Just as a follow up. I checked out the sites you recommended and came up with only one issue. My current Internet connection. I am out in the sticks of South Carolina with nothing but a modem and the most I can get out of it is 44k. It's like drinking a milkshake though a coffee stirrer.

If I am to move forward quickly, I will have to buy a boxed set or get my friend's computer working in NJ and use his broadband connection and burn me some CDs. He just had a meltdown trying to upgrade his bios in an old Intel Slot 1 MB. I am coaching him through an AMD socket A based MB replacement and he just got his parts in this past week.

[yujen]

Originally posted by Richard Craneum:
looking at your specs, if you load MDK choose a desktop enviroment like GNOME or IceW. KDE is too big I believe for your CPU so it will go a bit slow. Now, 2GB is kind of small so when you install it do not choose all the bells and wistles you will run out of room. Can you bump the HDD for something bigger? I am just using MDK as an example. RH will ask the same qustions.

2gb is more than enough for linux... if you need more than that either you have useless software you'll never need or the distro you used installed stuff they "think" you'll need but more than likely you won't.... it probably went ahead and installed all the development libararies and sources but unless you develop software OR plan on compiling your own binaries, those packages are not required.

[Richard Craneum]

The thing is, when he start to load RPMs he might run into problems with dependancies, so a full blown does better for a newbie and you are right about 2GB is enough, extra room does not hurt though.

Rooscow you can give a try to the ATI card it might work, it just a have seen more people with drivers problems for the ATI than NVIDIA. That does not meant that you is not going to work either. Try at least.

[Richard Craneum]

This is kind of Mandrake will look when the new KDE desktop environment will look like, now is in beta testing. Check this link out....

http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php...eview-mandrake

[yujen]

Originally posted by Richard Craneum:
The thing is, when he start to load RPMs he might run into problems with dependancies, so a full blown does better for a newbie and you are right about 2GB is enough, extra room does not hurt though.

Rooscow you can give a try to the ATI card it might work, it just a have seen more people with drivers problems for the ATI than NVIDIA. That does not meant that you is not going to work either. Try at least.

a good distro should install the base general dependencies glibc, etc... i've had kde up and running with less than 1gb worth of installed stuff... you can have X11 + a lightweight window manager such as blackbox up and running on a 256mb flash with 100mb to spare

it just depends wether you know what you want to do with your PC or not... although rh + mdk type distros tends to install alot of unnecessary libraries by default unless you specifically tell them not to

on the ATI drivers issue, are you talking about native XFree86 drivers or proprietary ati binary drivers?

i doubt there is much of an issue getting getting X11 to run on an ati card.

yujen