Re: Debian & Old Toshiba Laptop
On Wed, 2006-10-11 at 01:07 -0400, Kai wrote:
> I have a very old Toshiba laptop and I am looking to put Debian or
> some other form of linux on it.
> Details:
> CPU: Pentium I
> HD: ~700MB
> RAM: 16MB
> 2 PC Card slots, but some newer cards (such as wireless cards) do not fit
> Linksys EtherFast PC Card
> A wireless router, however I can not seem to set up a Windows network on it
> A Sony Vaio CD-RW drive PC Card
> an external bootable floppy drive on a special floppy port
> A working dock with parallel, serial, PS/2 and monitor ports
>
> I can boot and install from a large stack of floppys (20-25 disks),
> but I want to install from a CD or network and choose certain
> packages. I can access the CD during installation, and after install,
> but I can't boot from it, even using a Smart Boot Manager floppy. I
> want to install any base packages (preferably ash, not bash), and I
> want to use Xfce or IceWM-lite as a GUI, because the computer is so
> limited.
The simplest way to get started is to get an adapter so you can plug the
hard drive into the IDE controller of a desktop computer that can boot
from the CD-ROM drive. Once you have that, just to a bare bones Debian
install (deselecting everything in tasksel). Once you have that done,
then you can put the drive back into the laptop and add packages as
needed.
I would also recommend getting a higher capacity hard drive and more RAM
(if the laptop can take more than 16MB). I also have an old Toshiba
laptop that is going to be set up with Linux soon. She's a Satellite
Pro CDT. I just recently maxed out her RAM at 40MB and replaced the
810MB drive with a 6.4GB drive. 2GB of that is for Windows 98SE Lite
(that's 98SE with IE totally eradicated thanks to this little tool from
litepc.com.) The rest is going to be Debian sid with IceWM.
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