I've scraped a few old parts together to make a box with Cyrix PR166+ CPU, 96MB RAM, 40GB HD sitting on an IDE RAID card. Video and LAN are PCI items about 2 years old. The only motherboard IDE device is a DVDROM.

I've downloaded the latest DVD Fedora distribution and it boots to the menu. No matter what options I try (mediacheck, noprobe etc) it reboots within a second of saying 'uncompressing linux'.

I'm a newbie to linux with reasonable experience in setting up Microsoft based servers. I aim to get away from Microsoft if possible. If Fedora is unsuitable, any suggestions on what I should run? I intend to set up ftp, mail server, file server etc.

Linux will run on the system, but prob'ly not Fedora... It's a bit too heavy for your specs. You can go with a lighter distro, such as Debian or Slackware, and install only the packages you need. You will definitely need a very light window manager if you want to run X. There are quite a few; fluxbox, icewm, etc. Don't even think of KDE or GNOME.
Take a look at <<www.ClarkConnect.org/index.php>>. It is a home/small office distro that routes a network to the internet, and serves mail, files, website, etc. I run it on several boxes ranging from a P-100 to a P!!!-500. The CD ISO is small, or you can download a boot-floppy and install directly off the internet.

My CC box at work is a P-133 with 64MB and a couple gig hard-drive. It routes and runs my (small) website and mail server. It's been up-and-running without a single problem for 435 days. The last time I shut it down was to upgrade to CC 2.0. Before that, it had been up 282 days, since we moved into the new office and got cable internet.

A P133 with a 40 gig HD?
Does your bios actually "see" all 40 gigs????
It seems awfully big for that old of a system.

Good Luck.

I suggest you look for posts by me with the work "laptop". I'm sure you can do something. Good luck!

Yves.

try damnsmalllinux.org.

works fine on Intel TX/ibm166+/48MB/1,2GB 4500RPM Quantum Bigfoot

Hi,

I've managed to get Fedora Core 2 on a P166 laptop with 48MB RAM and 4GB HDD
(HP Omnibook 800CT). Which version of Fedora are you trying to install? I believe
the Cyrix CPU you have is i586 compatible (I had one years ago). Could it be
possible that Fedora Core 3 (presumably) has i686-specific code in it?

Dave

PS - Make sure that CPU and the power regulators are kept cool, I had "reboot"
problems because the regulators kept getting red hot!

You may just need to go up and spray some ether into the carb, hurry to the front and give the crank a couple of spins (careful of your fingers!). If you hear it coughing, then cut back on the mixture, it's too rich. Give it a minute or so to dry out then try again. Once you get it up and chugging, let it sit for a few minutes to get the lubricant flowing around the block, be careful, if anything breaks, I don't think they make parts for that anymore....

One of the HDs is 10GB, the other is 40GB. Seems to be all usable since it's connected via a PCI-IDE card.

The version that kept crashing was Redhat Fedora core 3. I'm currently downloading clarkconnect etc, so I'll see how it goes.

Jfrey - I was hoping this hampster driven machine would run a few tasks both quietly and energy efficiently. Anyway, I can't complain - the hampster was free.