I am working on just such a computer for a client. The computer is an old Compaq Armada 110 with 128 MB RAM running Windows 98 SE. I realised that it would be difficult to reinstall the original operating system if the owner ever wanted to do that since he no longer has the original recovery CD. That prompted me to make an image backup of the disk before I made any changes. The steps are theoretically easy enough: Connect a USB hard drive, boot a text mode Linux distribution from the CD, and finally use dd to make a backup of /dev/hda1 and of the MBR. The most difficult part of this was finding a console mode Linux to boot. Since the machine only has 128 MB RAM I found that most live CDs would partially boot and then hang. I finally had good luck with the Open SuSE v10.2 installation disk 1 booting the rescue system available from the GRUB menu. It is sweet.
Okay, so now I've got a dd image of the MBR and another dd image of the disk partition. I then used the same Open SuSE 10.2 rescue system to partition the disk and format the new disk partitions. I decided that since the machine has so little RAM I would make up for it by making a large swap partition. The Compaq Armada 110 computer has a 10 GB hard disk. I divided that up into a 9 GB system partition and a 1 GB swap partition. I formatted the system partition with the ext3 file system and I formatted the swap partition.
Then the fun began. I tried to install numerous Linux distributions. I can tell you that most of the most popular Linux distros require at least 256 MB RAM. Most of these distributions would start to boot and then hang at some point.
Now this Compaq Armada 110 does not have a NIC. I should say that it does have a NIC but it is disabled in the BIOS. Linux cannot see the NIC. I know that it is there because I removed a cover under the modem connector and found that there was a NIC connector next to the modem connector, and there are wires going to the NIC connector. I suspect that the NIC hardware is there and would work if it weren't disabled in the BIOS. Nevertheless, the point of my mentioning this is that my client wants to have wireless network on this machine. We purchased a Netgear WG511T wireless PCMCIA card. This card uses the Atheros wifi chip set and requires the madwifi drivers. These were included in the Slackware installation. Unfortunately the WPA Supplicant software isn't included in the Slackare installation kit and the WPA Supplicant that is available at the slackware.com web site was compiled without madwifi driver support.
At first I tried to get the wireless NIC to work with Windows 98. It actually did work but Windows 98 did not have the WPA Supplicant that is required for encrypted WPA2 wireless networks. So I decided to try to get a version of Linux running on this machine. I have since found that there is a WPA Supplicant package for Windows. Nevertheless I had decided to try to get some version of Linux working on this machine so I continued with that goal.
I finally found that Vector Linux would work but it uses a horrible looking X window manager. I couldn't expect that my client would be very happy with that mess when the machine had been running W98. The graphics of W98 are much nicer looking so I decided that Vector Linux was not acceptable.
I tried and succeeded to get Slackware v11.0 running on the machine. It ran at a good speed, even when using KDE. The problem was that I could not get a WiFi application that would allow a normal user to scan and connect to wireless networks on demand. I could only find instructions on putting one specific network configuration into the system startup files. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the WPA Supplicant software available on the slackare.com web site did not support the madwifi drivers.
I finally decided that I would purchase additional memory for this system myself. This would allow this machine to run PCLinuxOS. I found a 128 MB RAM board for this machine and I have ordered it. Hopefully it will arrive this week. That will allow me to install PCLinuxOS, which has a very good wireless configuration on demand via the PCLinuxOS system configuration application. This application has to be run with root privileges but it prompts you for the root password when you run the software so it is pretty convenient.
I won't list all of the Linux distributions that I tried to install on this machine. All that I can say is that Slackware and Mepis are the only ones that ran. Mepis didn't completely install correctly. Slackware didn't have a good wifi connect-on-demand application. If the machine belonged to me I would probably keep the Slackware and try more applications like WiFi Radar on Slackware. It could easily become a hobby and I've already spent four days on this project, 16 hours per day, no sleep, no going out of the house, etc. Naturally I am not charging my client for this. He could have easily purchased a nice new notebook computer for less than what I charge times the number of hours that I've worked on this. I just consider it a favor to the client and forget about the money.
So, you can find a distro or two that will run on old minimal hardware. Slackware would be my first choice if you have less than 256 MB RAM. If you have at least that much memory then I recommend PCLinuxOS. I've been using that on my notebook computer with 256 MB RAM for over a year and I'm very happy with it.
You know, this Compaq Armada 110 is a pretty sweet little machine. I have become very fond of it in the several days that I've been working with it. The screen is small, but that means that the overall size of the computer is also small. I like it. I wish that I could keep it.
I'll end where I started. DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A BACKUP OF WINDOWS AND THE MBR BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE TO THE MACHINE!!!!
Have fun.
