I tried to run Windows XP on a 28 year old 486 laptop! Video evidence included.

It did not go well !

He's even older than me, so please let him go. Maybe you should try Linux.

panming wrote:

He's even older than me, so please let him go. Maybe you should try Linux.

Oh i did, i am sure it can run some very limited Linux, but after 6 days of installing and changing hard drives on this and 7 other old laptops, had enough of brainf@ks !
Much more to come for sure, i have 7 installed and working, even networking on Win95 and Win98SE and Ubuntu 8.04 with all of those mentioned.
Learning video editing, again, after 23 years, this is te result of one evening of fiddling with KdenLive on Linux, but most of the time i spent checking hardware encoding using CPU and/or GPU.

You remind me of the guys who installed Linux into arduino uno, what I would call geeks!

Yeah I'd like to see that, but I doubt I have the time needed to watch the thing boot.

I'd tried to run a Harley on the road, it was and always will be a failure. Hahahaha

It probably depends on the RAM but IIRC I used to run linux with emacs, TeX and gcc (without X, but with some kind of frambuffer-dvi-previewer) on a 386sx "laptop" with 2mb RAM. The later 486DX4 with 16mb RAM was a beefy development machine with X, multiple windows, Tcl/Tk "XF" form builder, emacs, what have you. So you just need to find a linux distribution that's old enough, early Suse or Slackware. 

Just when I had banished Windows from my life earier in the month , today I spun up a cloud based windows server and they gave me a RDP shortcut so I guess I will have to remember how to dual boot into Windows

But to balance it out i also spun up a Debian server to see if I can run CUPS on it...

Must be the week for it, I had to drag out an old laptop (win98) to run the software to to program some EEPROMS. A few years ago I saw an old Needham EMP-11 that need a home, came with original PSU a centronics and a set of 5 personality cards.
Then I found out that there is WinXP software available, VBox virtual machine and LPT pass through is the go now.
I'm got a bit of an addiction to some of the RetroComputing projects available. Just finished a Apple 1 thingy (wozmon,integer basic and krusader assembler in a 8k rom). Should be good friend for the Z80 CP/M thingy.

Just when i thought nobody would bother watching it...
Yeah, that was quite the era in history, although i started with ZX81 and Spectrum and Commodore 16 and Commodore 64, Basic and Assembler were the usual, i miss Assembler! I was good at Assembler and i could do everything possible with Basic, had a huge poster with Assembler instructions on my bedroom wall, gathered neighbors to play games on C64 and Atari 520STFM, one of them broke 3 joysticks...

rmu wrote:

So you just need to find a linux distribution that's old enough, early Suse or Slackware. 

There are actually new Linux distros that work on this, Kolibri OS, Slitaz, Damn small Linux, older versions of Slax and Porteus that are still new, some of those work from a floppy at 1.44MB only!
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Last 3 weeks i have fixed, cleaned, installed, etc a huge amount of old stuff, even my second WalkMan still works despite being nearly or more than 40 years old! MiniDisc from 2002, the Sony MZ-1 i got in 1992 or 1993 got lost in the war together with Laser Disc and Panasonic fax machine with micro tapes and a lot, a lot of other stuff, like over 300 original music CD's.
Thank you all for your continued support, very much appreciated.

Sorry, but did not feel like editing the above post, forgot to add there is also "coolcnc.iso" serch for it and be amazed, it is a fully functional Linux with LinuxCNC in it at 50MB size!
Debian Dog with EMC2/LinuxCNC is at around 300MB or less, Debian, just do not try to upgrade it, it will mess up the repo list for sure, tried several times.
This is related to CNC and LinuxCNC and can be used in really old PC's to control actual machines.