OK, I'll admit it: I know almost nothing about computers. The first computer I set a finger on willingly was a Win95 machine, and the command line I'm most comfortable with is "win" to this day. But I'm here to change all that, so don't rough me up too much, ok? Please?

I'll state the question first, and then go with my reasons for it.

How the heck can you determine how much space your computer has on it? I mean, how can you figure out how many RAM and ROM and what kind of chip is in its innerds?

Here's why, if you're curious...

I have two ancient desktops... I mean probably mid-90s. I have plans for these two slugs, if I can just get them going...

I have a webcomic in the works, you see. One of my ancient computers... Basta, I call her (Spanish for "enough") was a used machine my parents bought me in 1999, when I won (can you belive it?) an HP flatbed scanner. It works about 45% of the time, and best I can tell, that's pretty darn lucky for HP. Basta's running Win 98... barely. This is what the scanner called for, and as much as I hate to say it, unless I can get a driver for decade-old HP technology in Linux I'm gonna be forced to keep poor Basta a slave of Bill Gates.

Drat.

On the other hand, I have Roxy. By a miracle of the patron saint of computers, Roxy's memory and Basta's memory play well together... I was able to combine the memory for both machines, and to my delight I wound up (I think) with 16 RAM. Which was more than I had before, I must say.

What I really want to do is put Basta's hard drive into Roxy's body, and put a dual-boot OS onto Rox that would let me choose wheather I wanted to scan something in (boot up Basta) or GIMP it, edit it ect. (boot up Roxy). All I need Basta for is her scanning software, frankly. And all I need on Roxy is GIMP and maybe something to type some HTML onto. And space for files.

Sounds like a plan, huh? But Roxy's not feeling cooperative. I tried Puppy on Rox... um... she's not big enough. Puppy will run, well, walk... but it tends to crash *grumble* and best I can tell, (admitedly I can't tell much) Puppy hasn't been able to mount a partition on there yet. a frined of mine talked me through wiping Rox's hard drive clean as a new day, but that didn't help either.

For those of y'all that are presently wondering, I'm on my hubby's machine... I don't know what it is, but it's a far sight closer to a regular standard computer. He gripes that it's old, and he's right. (It's really old, honey. You need a new one. I'll be glad to take this old thing off your hands....) But this one, Fred (Fred doesn't really have a name), is already up and online and all that, so I don't need any online activity on RoxyBasta. Yes, I'll have to save my images to floppy and transport them across the house before I can upload them to the rest of the world. But then, I know already that I'll have to save them to a floppy to get them from Basta to Roxy. Just call me the queen of all things floppy.

So that's what I'm ultimately after: a minimalist distro that has GIMP and something I can peck HTML on. I've even given up having it on a pretty GUI because let's face it, Roxy's none too big. But before I go about getting something that suits my needs, I need to know exactly how tiny she is.

Any suggestions? :hopeful:

Well, let's see. Where to start.
This is a bit of a tall order, as I'm not sure what it is that you are comfortable doing, and what you aren't.
I'll assume from your first paragraph, that you aren't comfortable with much, so, as you say, I'll try to be "gentle"

You have two, slightly arcane machines, and if I understand you correctly, you want to combine the two, into one machine? It seems that is your goal, but for the fact you need Win98 to run the scanner. So, that's out.

There are a number of ways to tell what you have, as far as hardware is concerned. You can try dxdiag, although, I'm not sure it exists on Win98 machines......

Go to Start>Run>
Type dxdiag
Click OK.

If it exists, it will run for a bit, and then tell you all kinds of stuff you want to know about your machine.
All the things you are after, are on the first page.

If that doesn't work, you will get a little bit of info from right clicking "My Computer" on the Desktop, and choosing "Properties"

This will tell you approx. proc. speed, and on board memory.

As far as your requirements, I'm not sure they can be met.
If you are looking to install linux on Roxy, for use of the Gimp, you will need to install the Base OS, as well as X, all the libraries, and The Gimp. Unfortunately, The Gimp requires the GUI, and all the drivespace-eating files that come with it.
DSL(Damn Small Linux) has a small footprint, but may not be as versatile as you need.
I would try either a stripped install of Fedora Core 4 (http://fedora.redhat.com) or the Knoppix live CD(http://knoppix.org)
The live CD would allow you to run Linux, and use the Gimp, without installing any software or OS's.
However, in a machine of that age, I will warn you, that it may be slower than dirt.

For HTML, you can use any editor, emacs, vi, nano, pico, whatever you are comfortable with.

My advice to you?
Combine the two, make the fastest machine you can, and when you are done, fight with the scanner to get it to work.
Scanners do work in Linux ya know

Minimalist distributions tend not to have huge apps like GIMP, but you can always install GIMP later. How about Damn Small Linux?

Slackware can go on old computers really well. Vector is partially pre-tweaked, so you can handle it if you can not handle Slackware.

Okay, if I understand this right, you've got a grand total of 16megs of RAM, which is combined from two different machines. That means those other two HAD 8megs of RAM, which is a really unhappy bare minimum for Windows 98 to run.

It sounds like you've got a couple Pentium machines, which were already antiques in 1999 when your parents got you one of them. Those computers use SIMM memory, probably 2 4meg SIMM modules each.

With a total of 16megs of RAM, your options for a modern operating system are extremely limited. IMHO, you should stick with Windows 95 or 98 for now, and try downloading the Windows version of The GIMP (it's just as free as the Linux version). It might not even run, with just 16megs of RAM. If you don't have enough RAM for it to run under Windows 95, you're not going to get it to run under Linux either.

My prediction? The GIMP will barely run, and it won't be useful at all. This will be true in Windows 95 and 98, and if you try to install Linux it'll be true in Linux also.

If I were you, I'd pick up a cheap used or new computer with at least 128megs of RAM, and boost it to 192+megs of RAM to run The GIMP well. Anything with at least a Pentium II will be a big step up for you; I'd personally go for at least a Pentium III to get smooth playback of videos. http://www.directron.com/ has a selection of suitable old cheap computers. Here's one for $69: http://www.directron.com/gxa.html

While you're at it, the highly popular HP PSC1315 combination scanner/printer is stylish and inexpensive. (And fully supported in Linux.)

Wow, thanks, y'all. I expected one short response, maybe two if I was lucky. (Thanks to everyone!)

I delved into Roxy's innerds... I'm all proud of myself. No word on what Basta has yet, since I'll have to open Roxy and dig out all her memory to transfer it back into Basta. And yet, it seems that this is what I'm gonna have to do, becuase Roxy's numbers look kind of bleak.

She's got a Pentium MMX, Speed 166.403, with a bogoMIPS of 331.77. Her total RAM memory is 46156 kB, and 4556 kB of those are free. It also said she has 48 MB LOWMEM available, and the RAMDISK driver initialized 16 RAM disks (I knew there was a 16 in there somewhere!) of 61440K size 1024 blocksize.

So I'm guessing that this means I keep using Fred (and it turns out Fred has a name, just not a family-friendly one) for my GIMPing (I have the Windows version, and I just love it), use Basta for my flatbed scanning, and thank Roxy for her memory and give her a small, quiet memorial and burial at sea.

Unless anyone thinks that my grand plan is still feasable...?