OLD laptop

[f'lar]

Hey, I didn't know where to ask this, so here goes.
I've been playing around with this old laptop for a while: 486 DX/2 with 20mb or ram. enough for linux easily, but it only has 116mb harddrive, so I don't have space to get X on there and the apps I want. Same with 95, and I don't want Win3.1 on it. I have a copy of OS/2 Warp 3.0 that my summer employer was gonna throw out, and it installs in < 50mb, so I'm gonna give it a try. Definitely not the most pretty OS, but it works. It comes with an office suite, and even a web browser, though I'll probably scrap that for the netscape. What I need now is to find out if there is a c++ compiler out there, so I can do my comp sci homework on it. Or if there's not if borland's free tools will work, since it's dos compatible. Or more accurately, if there is a smaller version of the borland's free tools, since they take up 40mb.

[Shadoglare]

Well if you're interested in running linux on it I installed Debian from floppies onto a 486/25 with 4MB ram and a 120MB hard drive. It's slow as molassis cuz of the low memory and processor, but probably wouldn't do too bad on yours at all. (Takes about 10 floppies for the base image).
I don't do any developing myself, but a problem would be I seem to remember the 'make' stuff being over 100MB by itself - I could be wrong though as that's not my department :)

[f'lar]

did that include X? If so I'm very interested to know how you put it together: there are a couple files that are too large by themselves to do a floppy install, and it wouldn't be as big a problem on this one, because as small as the hdd is, it has 20mb of ram, and I'd use blackbox, windowmake, or xfce. I've had linux on it for several months with most of the X stuff, but couldn't get quite all of it, and I rarely used it because I can't get as much done with text only.

[ 27 February 2001: Message edited by: f'lar ]

[mram19]

I've got a 486/50 laptop with 24mb RAM and 500mb hard drive. I bought it to learn Python on at a coffee shop.

I could have tried to install x, but didn't because I didn't think i'd be able to actually do much with it. Command line + emacs works fine for text editing, scripting, etc. and I sneaker-net my files to my other machine via floppy. It's simple, convenient and the old 486 is indestructible.

[ph34r]

I have a low-end lappy myself... I got it free with a bad drive. A few days of watching e-bay, and I got a 350mb one for $12... 800m-1g ones were about $35 on average final price. Why not just get the bigger drive for a small investment and be done?

[f'lar]

It's a little too old for that I think, though I may give it a try. I think the harddrive is too built in: I'd have to take the casing apart to get at it, though if I find one that looks like it will work I may try it. BTW, 24mb and 500mb is more than enough for X, but you won't want gnome or kde on it, and keep it to 640x480x256. I'm actaully pretty happy with os2 for this machine, I'm just still looking for a c++ compiler.