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looking for older version of linux

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DOS-Master

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2006
Messages
180
can one of you guys link me to a download of linux that will work on my old 90's latitude xpi Ms-dos laptop?

106.jpg
 
try here, there are a few links for linux for a 486, http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux-newbie/27615-looking-older-versions-linux.html

I'm a slacker. I have an old SAMS book cd but no burner, else I'd burn you a copy and send it to you :(

See if you can get a copy of Slackware Unleashed with the CD. I got mine for $5 from fetchbook. On the cd it has the OS and lots of apps from the time. ALso you get the book and the only thing in the OS that has changed is "adduser" has become "useradd." Some of the apps changed, but the kernel has largely stayed the same.

Nathan

/edit Also, the kernel can be customised for the particular machine, say if you need a driver you yank it from the new one and recompile it. It sounds harder than it really is. YAY Unix class!

/edit again I went to fetchbook.info and found several copies for less than a dollar plus shipping. Don't let the initial 'list price' get you nervous, go to compare prices and you'll see people are practically giving these things away. Hope this helps!
 
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Linux on a Dell Latitude XPi

Linux on a Dell Latitude XPi

I also have a Dell Latitude XPi P133. Without a CD-ROM drive. I attempted to load Debian Linux on it using the net boot floppy disks, then connect to my network using a Linksys EtherFast 10/100 PCMCIA card. The problem appears to be with the Linux drivers for the PCMCIA core. Sometimes the card would be detected, sometimes it wouldn't. I finally gave up in frustration. This is from a guy that has installed Linux on many different computers, including older laptops, since mid-1999.

I finally just installed MS-DOS 6.2 on it. I have a null modem cable (hey, we have to save those relics, right?), and will connect it to another DOS machine and use LapLink to transfer files and programs over.

<sour grapes>
I really don't need Linux on yet another computer. I already have it running on three machines at the house (including a Dell Inspiron 1000 notebook), with my test computer (#4) standing by for the imminent release of Slackware 11. I'll enjoy the XPi with MS-DOS on it just as much as I would Linux.
</sour grapes>
 
a suggestion from the village idiot - take the hard drive out of the laptop (easier said then done on some models), plug it into a desktop puter, transfer an image to the drive (umm hopefully one that can be unpacked) then plug it back into the lt.

"I finally just installed MS-DOS 6.2 on it. I have a null modem cable (hey, we have to save those relics, right?), and will connect it to another DOS machine and use LapLink to transfer files and programs over."

Earlier distros were quite small, so I guess transferring all that stuph via null modem shouldn't be too excruciating, right?

I'm also interested in obtaining early Linux distros. I even obtained a book a while back on Yggdrasil, missing the cd, and the floppy was unreadable. It was entitled plug-and-play Linux. I'm guessing, though haven't looked much to date, that they're all out there somewhere. I would have guessed that there'd be a server out there will all the early kernel stuph for reference and whatnot, but I guess I shouldn't count on it.
 
Chris2005 said:
a suggestion from the village idiot - take the hard drive out of the laptop (easier said then done on some models), plug it into a desktop puter, transfer an image to the drive (umm hopefully one that can be unpacked) then plug it back into the lt.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's not a bad idea! You'd have to get an adapter to adapt the IDE cable to the smaller drive, I think (not really sure on that one), but it could be mounted under Linux, then you could build your own distro on it, or install a distro on it. You wouldn't even have to copy an image over.

Chris2005 said:
I'm also interested in obtaining early Linux distros. I even obtained a book a while back on Yggdrasil, missing the cd, and the floppy was unreadable. It was entitled plug-and-play Linux. I'm guessing, though haven't looked much to date, that they're all out there somewhere. I would have guessed that there'd be a server out there will all the early kernel stuph for reference and whatnot, but I guess I shouldn't count on it.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they're out there. I have some from back around 1999, but nothing older. I know on the Slackware site, you can download older versions (back to 3.0, I think, on some mirrors).

The XPi, depending on the processor type and speed, and RAM, should also be able to load a more modern distro. You may have to trim it back a bit on what is loaded, and you most definately won't be running KDE or Gnome as your desktop (try Fluxbox or Blackbox, they are very light weight).
 
"...You'd have to get an adapter to adapt the IDE cable to the smaller drive, I think (not really sure on that one), but it could be mounted under Linux, then you could build your own distro on it, or install a distro on it. You wouldn't even have to copy an image over."

You would need an adapter assuredly. They're not too hard to find or expensive usually. The reason I suggested copying an image was cuz I was thinking installing directly to the hard drive on the desktop would cause the installation to be "locked" to it's particular hardware, however minute. Earlier lt's don't have nearly as much specialized crap as they do these days, but there's still going to be small differences I guess.
 
Actually, I'm enjoying having MS-DOS on the XPi. Having a P-133 processor and 32 MB of RAM, DOS runs quite nicely!

Also, any inconveniences caused by the lack of a CD-ROM drive can be overcome using a serial cable and LapLink (or Microsoft's Interlink/Interserver). I enjoy hacking around in DOS, something I have enjoyed for 20+ years now. Having it on the notebook makes it more portable.

I also have Windows 3.11 installed on the notebook, and it runs great. Dell still had the drivers, which allowed me to get an 800x600 screen (at only 256 colors though), and the sound card working.

I think I might just dig out one of my old external modems and look up some BBS systems out there. That should really feed my nostalgia! :)
 
Finding an "alive" BBS might be a real challenge. One of my favs - Hottips - in Glendale CA closed down in 1994. I strongly doubt there are any about. I even tried some "telnet"s not too long ago. The telnet would work (make a connection) but there was nothing there once connected. I could hit enter all day and no prompts of any kind.
 
chuckcmagee said:
Finding an "alive" BBS might be a real challenge. One of my favs - Hottips - in Glendale CA closed down in 1994. I strongly doubt there are any about. I even tried some "telnet"s not too long ago. The telnet would work (make a connection) but there was nothing there once connected. I could hit enter all day and no prompts of any kind.
Click to expand...

I've found a couple of telnet BBS's that still work. The traffic on those sites is quite low though. Try these:

telnet bbs.abyssnode.net Abyss BBS
telnet gozer.moonstar.com TigerNET BBS

Both of these BBS's still work, and you should be able to easily create an account.

NOTE: I use telnet under Linux. The console telnet client on Windows is sort of brain-dead, and may not work exactly the same. If you have problems logging in to these BBS's, download and use PuTTy (a quick Google search will turn up the download page), as it implements telnet (and SSH) correctly under Windows.
 
Hehe, that was fun. The console windows telnet worked just fine on Abyss. Of course, I couldn't remember anything about how to work a BBS. People think their memory works great, WRONG. I did manage to create an account and read a few messages. Looks like has been very close to dead since 2000.
 
chuckcmagee said:
Hehe, that was fun. The console windows telnet worked just fine on Abyss. Of course, I couldn't remember anything about how to work a BBS. People think their memory works great, WRONG. I did manage to create an account and read a few messages. Looks like has been very close to dead since 2000.
Click to expand...

Ok, now that you remember how much fun it was, you can go through and check out some of the BBS's listed on this site:

http://www.dmine.com/telnet/

This is where I found both of the BBS's I listed in my earlier post.

I try to log in to the Abyss BBS at least once a week and check for new messages. If other folk were to do the same, and perhaps post a message from time to time, this board (and others too) would come back to life.
 
I started my online life on BBSs. Heck, I did some dating via BBS. I was the prototypical nerd in my teens. I even did some BBS door game development and made a little money on registration fees doing it. My stuff is probably still floating around on some forgotten Walnut Creek CD-ROM somewhere.

The ibiblio archive is great for old Linux distros. This is a link to the SLS Linux distro that I fixed learned to tweak X on. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/sls/1.05/

It came on individual floppies and I had them all. Finally threw my home downloaded copy (each 1.44MB floppy had to be downloaded. One of the reasons I got a Courier HST modem) not too long ago. If I ever pick up an old 486 laptop, I'd run legacy Linux on it. My first choice would be an IBM Thinkpad 350c (?). It was one of the first color laptops. It had a tiny 7-8 inch screen, external floppy, 486SLC processor (16 or 20Mhz), 4MB RAM, HDD (20 or 40MB I think). The whole thing weighed 3.5 pounds. It put me through college.

Matt
 
I understand totally. I really enjoyed the BBS era, and I do miss it. Someday you and I will have to have a discussion on Linux. I didn't start using it until 1999, but it had been rattling around in my brain for several years before that.

Like most of the people on this forum, I've grown accustomed to the availabilty of the Internet. Even though I miss logging in to my favorite BBS's, I doubt I could ever go back to using that as my only means of being "on-line". Heck, I've had a broadband connection (ADSL) since October of 2000, and the few times I've had to use dial-up to reach the Internet, I've been irritated by how slow it is.

We've got the next-to-the highest speed ADSL connection Bellsouth offeres here (3Mbps down, 384Kbps up), but I've been thinking about talking the wife into upgrading to the top-end connection (6Mbps down, 512Kbps up). It costs less than $10 more a month, so she might go for it. :)

BTW, thanks for the link, I doubt seriously I have anything capable of running it though ;-) I will look into one of the older Slackware versions, I used to run one of them on my old laptop. Perhaps I can get Slack 3.1 or 3.9 to install via floppy disk. I don't want X on it, just a console (or multiple virtual consoles, actually!)
 
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i am guessing your laptop is a low end 486? if so, the latest version of debian should be just fine as long as you dont load up a bunch of extras you don't need and if possible, stick with console rather than x-windows

if it's slower, like a 386 i'd reccommend debian "potato" (which is debian v2.2)

i tried the latest debian 3.1 on my 386 DX/40 w/ 256 MB hard disk and 3 MB of RAM. after still cranking away on the hard drive and not even being done initializing the initd superserver after over 3 hours, i just decided to format it with DOS again :tellme:

it didnt even have enough RAM to run the install on the machine. i had to put the hard drive in my athlon 64 and install it on it in a VM box and also give it a 50 MB or so swap partition :yell:
 
Mike Chambers said:
i am guessing your laptop is a low end 486? if so, the latest version of debian should be just fine as long as you dont load up a bunch of extras you don't need and if possible, stick with console rather than x-windows
Click to expand...

Nah, it's a stinkin P-133 ;-)

I've got MS-DOS 6.2 on it right now, and I'm fine with that. Perhaps later on I'll give installing Linux or one of the BSD's a shot though.
 
...You know, what always worked for me on those older lappies, if you can find it, is the old Corel Linux distro's, as well as the older Caldera Linux distro's.

At one time, in 1999 or so, I even ran the wireless Raytheon 2Mbps PCMCIA cards. It also recognized everything else PCMCIA I had, like my Adaptec 16xx PCMCIA SCSI, my 3COM Ether nics, and a couple novell PCMCIA clones. I used these on an older HP Pentium laptop, probably a P90 or so.


Tony
 
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