I found a Magitronic laptop, that meets the requirements for the Small Linux Install. The process so far keeps stalling. I have run into multiple errors, and failures, only to resolve them, and be thwarted again!!!
Anyone out there interested in giving me a hand? All replies will be responded to post haste!! I plan on conquering this project tonight!!!

Um, what kind of errors...?

kernal panic, a message asking me to run fsck on hda1, you name it, i have seen a few wierd ones so far. I just restarted the whole process. Just fdisk'ed, and mkfs. about to copy files now. Have you used small Linux before?

Considering your "found" this laptop, it could very well have a corrupted-beyond-repair hdd.

I'm using linux on a 366mhz laptop and its hdd was so bad (installing would fail with repeated errors on hda) that I just went out and bought a new 20 gigger off ebay and everything since then has been fantastic.

Especially since it complains of a fsck and corrupted hda, it only makes sense that this too is the fate of the laptop you've got :P

well, i had thought of that as well. but when first started this epic project (hehe) I used a windows boot disk and ran scan disk. no problems at all.
Late lastnight, i was almost finished with the install, and i ran into trouble trying to follow the cryptic instructions for moveing the krenel to the HD.
Since it is onlt a two floppy install, i just started it over today.

now when i run
mkfs.ext2 -t /dev/hda1

i end up with
popen: Out of memory while trying to run 'badblocks -s /dev/hda1 179970'

i didnt get this error at all last time.

The DSL distro (50mb) works well hhd-installed on my NEC Versa Portable:
166mmx 64 mb of RAM -300 mb space on hdd. But I've read it needs at least
32 mb to run GUI. And you can not install it with just 4 mb of RAM for sure.
Some people with 16mb of RAM remove the laptop hdd and do the Installation while connected to an IDE of the bigger tabletop system via an adaptor....after they continue to run the second stage of installation from their laptops.....

Have it installed, and running with one small glitch, which i am going to resolve with a slackware install over the exsisting file structure