Hello!

I looked for, read and tried but I couldn't install. I want to share my experience, perhaps somebody knows if it's possible or not.

I have this
Mother: with VIA C3 Samuel (no PAE, no cmov no cx8) (It's a i586)
RAM: 1GB I worked and I got this.
Disk: 70Gb (35GB with Windows XP)
Mode of installation: Plop and then pendrive conected by USB
Internet: I've connected a USB 802.11 draft-n wireless that Debian 8 recognized and ordered to me to install rt2870.bin.


What have I done?
I tried to install: Slackware 15, Bodhi and Debian 8. Bodhi didn't start. Debian is at the moment slow during the install.

What happened with Slackware?
Slackware 15(not 64 bits off course) started, but at screen of the packages it took 12 hours to install package A. I took one hour more, it was sad, but I decided to give up and shutdown poweroff.

What am I doing now?
Writing this at work, but my virtual version is watching and waiting how Debian 8 is installed. Debian 8 started and for the last time it was traying to connect WIFI. But...I want Slackware.

Is it possible? Can I install Slack on this ancient PC? I read this:

If it's possible... how can I do?
If it isn't...what distro? I'm traying with Debian 8, but my hologram is not sure.


Thanks for reading it.

From memory, they ran the i586 instruction set. Clock was about 1Ghz, and 133Mhz FSB for the ram. With those specs you could have agp-2x and/or pci-4x but that was very chipset dependent. This was a cheap 'n' cheerful cpu and via stuff sucked really bad.

Your speed problems are much more likely from your Via chipset than your cpu. The 'hdparm -tT' times will probably be really bad. Fortunately (or not) I have the T-shirt on Via, and the memory. I would install a historic OS on that POS. Slackware-12.0 has a 2.6x kernel. It's compiled i486. You just need to install the 'a/' packages to get going under a console, and we can try and get that running half right before pressing on. Remember, it will probably be ext2, you may just have ext3, but no ext4.

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No ext4...mmmm...I tried to install Slack 15 with a ext4 partition. That's a good warning, thxs.

I hope to work on it tomorrow and a bit the next days. Thanks for your comments.

ext2/ext4isn't that bad. ext2 will read & write ext4 disks but not update the journal. Any time you don't unmount properly, the disk is half wrecked, but usually is recoverable.

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I had to read. Now...I understood that I have to format ext2 because the techonology of that time couldn't work with ext4. Right?

Yes.

Finally, I installed...Salix. I studied a bit better the stuff and the processor is i586 (I have to add this info to the first post). So...I tried with Salix that seems to be a little brother of Slackware. The installation finished but...but...Now the problem is that I can't boot Salix.

I installed Plop few weeks ago, then, the boot was between WinXP and Plop. Now, with Salix it hasn't changed, boot remains Win XP/Plop.

Some details about Salix installation:
-I installed LILO
-I didn't add LILO to the MBR, it's on the superblock (or something with block)
-I don't remember the name of the partition where Salix is.
-I used ext2 for "/" and "/home" (and there is swap too)

I know have to do something more, but I can't solve it.

How can I fix this? Is there a tool to list partitions and create a clean boot?
I tried with Salix CD (by USB) to use some commands like fdisk or another but it didn't work.

Thanks!

If lilo is to function, you want it on the MBR of sda1. Edit /etc/lilo.conf, then install it. read man lilo.conf. Otherwise, use grub. Remember tomsrtbt - it saved me more often than I care to admit.

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I want to check...I get tomsrtbt , then I have to do an iso with that and start with it.

Can I see disk partitions with tomsrtbt?

http://www.toms.net/rb

You will need a good 1.44Meg floppy drive & disk, or a blank cdr for El Torito version.

Yes you can see the partitions. It has busybox which gives tiny versions of all standard console programs.

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