Re: tlug: Aptiva 520 - 486 DX

["Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com>]

On Sun, 21 Nov 1999, Tony Laszlo wrote:

> All, 
> 
> ISSHO (Tokyo-based non-profit) is about to 
> receive a badly needed donation of a computer.  
> It is an IBM Aptiva 520 with a 486 DX CPU (100Mhz), 
> 540M hard disk and 32M of ram - I hear it really 
> zips along :) (I hope it has a CD-ROM; we'll see 
> when it arrives). The group will use it primarily as 

wow, they really ARE in bad need of donations :)  Maybe we should hold a
TLUG bake sale to help them out or something?  You can auction off all the
monitors and CPUs that people have baked/fried/melted over the years :)

> I think the group is going to need more hard disk space 
> for this machine. I'm wondering if it would it be worth it 
> to replace the hard disk with a larger one (and perhaps 

putting it mildly :) ... just watch out for the BIOS limitations - some
older 486 machines can't address the newer drive geometries that you'll
find out there.

> running a more recent distribution that needs close 
> to 1G) or better to install what can be installed on the present 
> HD and connect up a separate disk either internal or external? 
> 

I don't think any distribution *requires* that much, does it?  Unless you
go and pick 'install everything'... :) ... I remember TL used to fit in
~100MB if you did the minimum install, and about 150-200MB to do what you
want to do.

> I'm wondering what distribution of Linux (preferably Japanese 
> localized) could be installed and run well on that machine? 
> I have had one recommendation for RedHat 4.2 with PJE. 

J localization isn't going to matter on a server box, esp. since you don't
have the disk/processor to really run X, so you're limited to console
stuff.  Sure, kon works, but it's setuid and admittedly not very secure
and not something you want on a server box.

--------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com>
Systems (UNIX) and Network Engineer
Taos - The SysAdmin Company 

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