From teh new to teh old!

[Sparda]

Large version

ok, so this guy brings me this laptop, and asks "How can I get this connected to the Internet?". I stood there like o.O, "Where did you get that?". He said "I found it in a skip". So I laughed, and it was all good :D

Any way, it's too old for me to know exactly what to get for it in terms of LAN/WLAN expansion cards. It would also be nice if I could put FreeBSD on it as Windows 95 runs sllllloooowwww. Unfortunately the external CD-ROM drive that was in the bag with it doesn't seem to work, it open, and you can put CDs in it, but Windows doesn't seem to detect it.

In any case, there are a bunch of pictures of the thing (and the 28.8Kbps modem) located here: http://sparda.hopto.org/hak5/teh_old_lappy/

Any help on what kind of card that modem is and if any LAN/WLAN cards are available would be nice.

Any thoughts?

[3TeK]

if it has a pcmcia slot in it, you should be able to slap in a network card...

i would think

unless its too old for that

[Sparda]

It turns out that the slots on the side are indeed PCMCIA slots (despite not obviously been so).

Aquiering a 10/100 LAN card that works on FreeBSD should not be too hard. I am, however, more concerned about it's HD at this point. With a whoping 1.2GB HD, I'm concerned that I can even install enough of FreeBSD to make it web browser worthy.

[majk]

It turns out that the slots on the side are indeed PCMCIA slots (despite not obviously been so).

Aquiering a 10/100 LAN card that works on FreeBSD should not be too hard. I am, however, more concerned about it's HD at this point. With a whoping 1.2GB HD, I'm concerned that I can even install enough of FreeBSD to make it web browser worthy.

That should be enough. And if not there are many other very small Linux/BSD distributions.

[cooper]

I am, however, more concerned about it's HD at this point. With a whoping 1.2GB HD, I'm concerned that I can even install enough of FreeBSD to make it web browser worthy.

That should be plenty, but even if it's not, you can replace those aswell you know. Should provide your customer with a nice performance boost as an added bonus, and is even likely to stretch his battery time a tad.

I can get a 40-gig laptop harddrive for 40 euros. 47 for a Toshiba one.

[Sparda]

Who wants to take bets of weather or not this card will work with the old Pentium I hardware and FreeBSD (which might end up been version 4.11 because I'll probably have to do a net install booting off a couple of floppys)?

[SomeoneE1se]

Who wants to take bets of weather or not this card will work with the old Pentium I hardware and FreeBSD (which might end up been version 4.11 because I'll probably have to do a net install booting off a couple of floppys)?

/me bets no

prove me wrong I dare you ;)

[kickarse]

Use damn small linux... 60mbs of goodness

[uber_tom]

yeah i'd use linux, BSD gets mighty moody about how you set up partitions and mount points, might leave you a bit short in your /home/ or /.

[Sparda]

I think I'll give DSLn a go... that means I have to find a couple of floppy disks... and a computer with a floppy drive...

[Sparda]

DSLn fails to boot (off floppy) with a lovely "BOOT FAILED" message, I'm guessing it has some thing to do with the boot loader used on the floppy, so I'm going to give FreeBSD 4.11 a try.

[Sparda]

ZOMFGS TRIPL3 P05TS!

oh well, never mind lol

After many restarts of the computer and many bashings of all the buttons on the keyboard I have goten access to the BIOS:

Original Size (perhaps I should open a flicr account)

Haven't got around to testing the FreeBSD 4.11 though.

[Guest ABC]

hook it up on the serial to another PC which is on the net and use it as a gateway?

[Sparda]

So... I got it to boot the FreeBSD 4.11 floppies. :D

Unfortunately when it tries to load the kernel off the MFS disk we get the lovely "Going no where with out my init!" message. I suspect it's my own stupid fault for not:

1. Checking the MD5 of the files

2. Using the officially suggested floppy image writing tool (I used rawwrite instead of fdimage)

but it does genuinely boot the FreeBSD 4.11 floppies ;)

Origional Size

[Chalito]

eww, old hardware. I'm sure that you'll be able to figure it out sparda

[Keiyentai]

I wish I could get an old working Laptop to play with bah. I just have uber old 4Bit stuff. Hmm >_>

[Sparda]

I can't get any modern Linux/BSD OS to boot on this thing :(

I guess I'm writing the disks wrong?

[Deveant]

hmm im not sure a gigaLAN is gonna work in it :S cant just got a 100/10? or even a 10 :P

[Sparda]

hmm im not sure a gigaLAN is gonna work in it :S cant just got a 100/10? or even a 10 :P

I'm not gona buy it until I can get a more modern OS on it.

[Garda]

are we still taking bets on this?

i'm betting yes

[SmoothCriminal]

thats an old laptop, i once saw a laptop that only ran windows 3.1 it was much bigger than that and by the looks of it slightly older and less usefull, good luck.