Thinkpad 755CX
This is a 1995-vintage machine (guessing by the BIOS copyright date on
the bottom) with a Pentium 75 and 16 MB of RAM (originally 8 until I
found a loose RAM expansion card under the floppy disk, heh heh). It
has no CDROM, no USB, no Ethernet. It does have a floppy disk, a
parallel port*, and two PCMCIA slots. My preferred method of
installation is a CompactFlash card in a PCMCIA sleeve, both for space
and speed reasons. However, memory, or lack thereof is proving a
problem for debian-installer. I have tried sarge, etch, and lenny
hd-media images and they all fail in various stages of the kernel boot,
most of the time before userland is started, sometimes panicking,
sometimes just hanging. The same applies to the floppies from Etch
(have not tried Sarge) but the Lenny installer does start in low-memory
mode, but I am having issues figuring out how to get network drivers
and/or packages onto this machine--all I have in the way of PCMCIA
(e.g. 16-bit) networking hardware is a D-Link DWL-650 rev.P, which
requires the HostAP driver and loadable firmware, neither of which are
included with the Lenny installer.
Anyone have any ideas of what I can do with this machine, including
other Linux distributions and/or operating systems (e.g. FreeDOS)?
Ultimately I'd like to get Debian in some form on the machine but
right now it looks like I can't really afford to be picky.
I'd rather not spend too much money on this machine, none preferably.
It's just an idle hobby, and I already spend enough money on my other
machines as it is. So in other words, I'd like to work with what I
have, if at all possible.
* I have a "LapLink" parallel cable suitable for PLIP...I _think_...if I
didn't give it away...I'd rather not go rooting in the attic for that
if at all possible.
--
Andrew J. Barr
Woke up in my clothes again this morning,
don't know exactly where I am...
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