*nix on "classic" systems

[Ethan Dicks]

On 4/10/07, Jim MacKenzie <jim at photojim.ca> wrote:
> A P90 will do.  I have Debian running on a 486sx25 with 32 MB of RAM.  It's
> quite luxurious for a low-end 486, but it's still pretty slow.  :)
>
> My firewall machine is a P133.
>
> You almost certainly won't want to run a GUI on such a machine unless you
> have a lot of RAM (and even then probably not), but you can put these
> machines to other uses.  A lot of useful software runs with shell-only
> installations.

I have an IBM PS/2-e running RedHat 5.2, text-only.  It's last use was
with 4 PCMCIA cards in its special IBM adapter, to simulate certain
features of a Cisco PIX (internal "private" network, with 2 DMZs and
an outside interface).  Of course one could just throw 4 PCI NICs into
a modern box and run a full-on install of whatever *NIX one chooses,
but it wouldn't be the size of a dictionary nor consume under 100W.

http://www.nothingtodo.org/classiccmp/ps2e.htm

Since the 486SLC tops out at 16M, it severely limits how modern of a
distro will fit on it.  RH5.2 seems to work nicely, but I'm sure an
older version of Slackware would do well, too.

I should see about finding a 387SX-25 for mine.

-ethan