What to do with old laptop?

inode

i got this laptop about a month ago on ebay for 19EUR just to mess about with, it doesnt seem to have ms-dos. when i turn it on all it gets to is here. any suggestions on what i can do with it? it has no cd rom, only a floppy drive. HD has 515mb



its a sager btw.

Tom Dunne

Donate it to a museum?

Gurgle

Its a 486-DX4, thats 100MHz iirc, stick Win '95 on it and you can use it for internet access.

inode

i would do that but it dont have a cd rom. does anyone know where i can get win 95 install floppy disks, ive been lookin everywhere

CuLT

oldskool.

I'm pretty sure there's at least one lightweight linux distro that would install from floppy disks.

inode

i found this http://www.toms.net/rb/ but the machine doesnt seem to have dos on it at all. it just loads up to that screen i posted

weeder

http://winworld.vze.com


or of course give it to me

philologos

lol you leech weeder, I reckon the best thing you could do for it would be to put on a lightweight linux distro and use it as a print server / web server or something

inode

thanks so much for the link weeder

JoeySully

There is always windows 3.1 or if ya really want to go mad get the upgrade as well 3.11. tak ya bout 2 hrs to install 12 disks i think.

Owen

The dx4 could be 75Mhz, 100Mhz or 120Mhz IIRC. You'll be able to run Win95, but go with a light weight Linux distro. You'll be able to browse the net at least!

inode

ive downloaded windows 3.1 floppy install as on cd rom. windows 95 links are not working. would love to put on linux. any links to a distro that can be installed through floppy?

CuLT

http://www.linux.org/dist/

Select Language: English
Select Category: Minimalist
Select Platform: Intel Compatible

There's a whole bunch listed there, probably best for you to have a look through them and see which is best. The ones that can be installed via floppy usually have it mentioned in the blurb.

Just Ctrl+F through the list searching for "floppy".

bushy...

If it has an ethernet socket, you can install linux/bsd over the net with one or two floppies , if it hasn't a socket you can get pcmcia to ethernet adaptors, my reasoning behind linux/bsd is you can cut it way down to size, and it would be up to date ( security-wise etc) ,whereas i suppose win3.1 would've been abandoned years ago support/update wise.
Maybe this would be the job for you... http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ?
only takes up 50megs

philologos

how would you transfer it to the root of the HDD over ethernet? does it even come with boot floppies

Requirements: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Minimum_Hardware_Requirements

depending on the amount of RAM, DSL Linux might still be too tough on it, and remember Firefox is a memory hog

Cochise

open the bottom of the laptop and take the hdd out, buy a laptop to pc adapter, €20 maplin, put damnsmalllinux on it through your pc, it has a lightweight browser as well as having firefox, its a great distro for old pc's. Once everything is working bring the adapter back to maplin get credit for it and buy a parrell cdrom drive

Dont mean to stray of the thread subject or promote items im selling but i have an old laptop somewhere that has a 4gb hard drive - if i can get the drive out of it i'll be selling it so PM if your interested.

whizzbang

Try putting Windows 98 SE onto it, slap in a wifi card and build a wireless Digital picture frame that takes updates from teh internet! Example

I did one and it turned out great! has been running the past year with no problems.

You could also do it with windows 95 and a wire network, or even without a network and just manually upload some photos.

inode

im actually on disk 2 of 38 installing windows 98. got windows 3.1 installed but then it messed up.

inode

ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! been installing it for last 4 hours, just about to go onto disk 17 when i discovered that it isnt there. does anyone here have it?

inode

tried skipping files, on disk 22 now, hopefully it will work

Keano

All i say is good luck with it...

patrickolee

Think I might have a load of Windows 98 floppys at home. May have thrown them out. Do you still need them?

dubambman

You should be able to install windows 98 over a network connection another computer. Just copy all the files from the cd to a folder and share it with the laptop

inode

i actually got a network pc card. but since i cant do anything with laptop how will i hook up a network?

whizzbang

inode wrote:

i actually got a network pc card. but since i cant do anything with laptop how will i hook up a network?

bootdisk with network card drivers?

J

MunsterCycling

Sounds like the plan

whizzbang wrote:

bootdisk with network card drivers?

J

Capt'n Midnight

you've got 12MB ram - not good for windows.
win 95 needs 12MB to load without relying on a swap file (pagefile.sys) 98 would be worse - and that's before you start any apps.

you could also use it as a firewall,

or as a photo album / hang it on a wall as a picture

does it have USB ? - be careful if you go looking for PCMCIA to USB cards many won't work in a laptop that old.

maidhc

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

you've got 12MB ram - not good for windows.
win 95 needs 12MB to load without relying on a swap file (pagefile.sys) 98 would be worse - and that's before you start any apps.

Windows 95A will live quite happily on 12mbs of ram, and what is more, Office 97 will also. It ran perfectly quickly too, it amazed me.

I used an IBM Thinkpad 750c (486DX-33/12mb ram/540mb hd) with this set up through college, only replaced it in 2004 with the x300... 10 years of reliable service, although I only had it for 5 of them.

I installed Windows 95 using floppies. (Google is your friend...), and did a network install of Office 97.

Fantastic set up tbh so long as you don't need the internet.

Capt'n Midnight

maidhc wrote:

Windows 95A will live quite happily on 12mbs of ram.

minium spec was 4MB :eek:

12MB is where it stops using the HDD as a crutch, more a case of if its practicable try to put 16MB in to a machine running 95. 98 is 95 version 3 or 95 + IE or 95 + loads of IE patches depending on your viewpoint.

Firefox and Open Office would not work well on such a low spec PC. Would 95\ + opera be a better bet - for office 602suite might be another option. Since the system is a 486 it's unlikely it came with a windows license so eBay is your friend. Having used Word 2 (dos) on a 286 with about 8MB of ram I would not call office 97 in 12MB amazing
(recomending google is a quick way to get banned)

maidhc

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Firefox and Open Office would not work well on such a low spec PC. Would 95\ + opera be a better bet - for office 602suite might be another option.

Oh god, not firefox anyway, it likes its ram!

One difference between office 97, and anything older is that it is really the point when MS stopped developing. The improvements since have been minor, to say the least.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

(recomending google is a quick way to get banned)

I assume if the OP has the disks he has a licence. If a disk is missing, google is a legitimate way to find a replacement. You can't be accused of copyright infringment, as you already have a licence.