Alright
here's the deal
I have an old Compaq LTE
486, 500mb hard drive, NO cdrom
i need a tiny OS i can fit on it
i've tried debian and redhat but the newer versions don't boot properly, and the only boot disk that lets me even get anywhere is an old rh5.0 which is not acceptable
this is just going to be a chat machine, so i need some os that has some form of irc or aim client
console is fine, though i wouldn't mind gui
if you have a recommendation PLEASE try to provide some links
i'm getting really frustrated
I hate to state the obvious, but Windows?
Any version will fit on a drive that size, although 98 and ME will not leave much room on a drive that small.
95 will run just fine, and 3.x will be more than small enough.
You might even be able to get some version of NT on there, but you might be stuck with 3.51.
Also, if you cut back on the extra options, there's no reason why Slackware Linux shouldn't run on there. I've gotten version 4.something to work on a 720MB hard drive. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to get it to run on a 500MB drive, unless there's some other hardware in the box that's incompatible.
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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"
What kind of NIC are you using?
I had a Linksys 10/100 PCI, and couldn't get it to work with ANY distro of Linux. Popped in a 3Com I had lying around and *presto chango*, it worked immediately.
The Linksys even comes with a Linux driver on the driver floppies, but it wouldn't work at all.
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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"
well
heh
this is an old 486 laptop
the network adapter is basically part of what appears to be a "docking" type station thingy
nothing on compaq's site
so i dunno
i wish it was
basically
this whole docking thing is just a big rectangle that is the length of the laptop (very ackward i might add)
and it plugs into the back and just has slots for a mouse, kb, monitor, printer, network
sigh
I'd switch my 486 to Linux, but I have one of those Antec Teleview cards that are designed to work only in DOS or windows. I haven't been able to find any kind of linux drivers for it, or I would go for it, too. Would make for a kick **** chat/surfing machine.
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Does driving a car from Saturn make me an alien?
) 
