[geeks] How low can you go...

Fri Mar 16 07:08:38 CDT 2007

On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 01:38:00PM +0200, Jonathan Groll wrote:
> I have about 4 (yes 4!) laptops of similar vintage (486). The idea was
> that they would make nice embedded machines, but nowadays you can obtain
> much more fun toys like gumstix computers.

I have several Macintosh laptops of slightly later vintage and they
are really usefull. Luckily they all came with CD drives. They also
had SCSI ports, which AFAIK only one Mac laptop did not, but some
it was an add on. With a SCSI port you can add a CD-ROM, external hard
disk (usefull for instalation) and so on.

> Just out of curiosity, how did you get the OS on the system - stiffy
> disks? And also what do you use it for? Are you running X also?

That was the standard way of doing things. My first Linux distro (Circa 
1995) was on a CD, but it contained floppy images. My first PC UNIX
system (circa 1990) was on floppy disks and so was my AT&T 3b2 computers.

> I only have one of the machines in use (with netbsd, Jochen is right it
> does work well and gave me an easier time than debian). It doesn't run
> X, and I only use it for the odd minicom connection.

Debian has grown a lot and that makes it difficult. I've had good luck
on prototype handheld devices with DSL (Damn Small Linux), but I had
more memory. It's Knoppix based and uses a RAM disk for writable
files.

> For me the biggest problem I have is no suitable PC card networking
> cards, so the utility of these computers is less if they can't be
> networked. Truthfully though, I could have investigated some sort of SLIP link, or
> looked into obtaining a suitable network card which will cost more than
> the laptop :-(

It depends. I find that they are difficult and expensive, even on eBay.
One person had 10 CARDBUS 10/100 cards BIN for $35, but I have not 
seen PCMCIA cards for anywhere near that low. Usually BIN for about that
price for one. What I have seen is ORINOCO (they had several manufacturers
over the years and were OEMed) cards for $10-$15. The bronze ones are 1 or 
2 mbit (I can't remember and worthless), the Silver ones are 11mbit
with 40/64 bit WEP. The gold ones have 128 bit WEP. There is a program
from the manufacuterer which runs on Windows XP to flash a silver into
a gold. Apple's Airport 4.2 will do it automaticly, but finding the
right laptop to do it may be difficult (Wallstreet/Lombard) with
MacOS 9.2.

The Dell versions of the card go for about $15, and even the original
brand name ones are that cheap. Most people don't want 11m bit, and
few people know about the silver to gold upgrade.

I like the cards because they are supported by or have drivers available for
one of the BSDs (Open?) Windows, Linux (from 2.2 on), and MacOS 7.5 to 9.2.2.

I also picked up an LG card made in 2005 with a different chipset,
there is a driver already in UBUNTU's kernel (but you need to add the
microcode dpkg). I think it was also available for 2.4 kernels.

> If anyone seriously has time to waste, or sadistic tendencies, or knows
> that their lives are being wasted anyway, contact me off list if you
> want one of these 486's. I'm not even sure if they're worth the
> hydrocarbons involved in shipping them world wide ;-)

I'd take them and give them away (yes, people here would use them), 
but I'm no longer allowed to accept hardware from people. After I
found out that there were 12 Macintosh computers in my living room
(remember the Mac Basement posts?), I was politely asked to clean 
up first. :-)

My biggest problem with laptops, is that I have many with dead batteries
and the batteries cost more to replace or rebuild than they are worth. :-(

Geoff.

-- 
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