ok, I have an old compaq pesario 4112..... its 120 mhz 40mb ram and slow as can be i'd like to put on a small linux distro with an X window system what shouuld I use? for some reason compaqs bios are weird and holding delete on startup doesnt bring up the bios so i cant boot from CD... arg i wanna make this thing more than a gigantic paper weight.... well I gotta say that you know how far computing has come when my compaq ipaq with an iBM micro drive is BETTER that this huge desktop........ well thanks in advance

check what i said here about compaq and their god awful bios's..
and as of a distro, you can really choose whatever you like, but i assume that machine doesn't have all that big of a harddrive, so you'll have to perform a very minimal installation, or just install it with no X window system, and have it completely text based.....
but their is a distro called damn small linux or something along those lines, or you can even try knoppix live cd and run off the cd or something...you have plenty of options even though its an old box..

Small , fast Distro: VectorLinux
Try one of the older ones , if 4.0RC2 doesn't do the trick.
Also ; I heard some good things about Peanut-Linux and I believe with Slack you can build a nifty , small and fast system WITH X as well.

I had a distro of Slackware on an old Compaq at one time. I couldn't get ANYTHING to work. No internet connection thru pcmcia NIC, no sound. Crappy video.

I'll never buy a Compaq again. I dont know what those monkeys put in there for parts but they suck!

Same here.. My first pc was a Compaq, what a joke.... Never again I'll buy one.. And to think about my Netwoking teacher loves COmpaq makes me sick.. He even has a Laptop!!!

I thought , it was pretty well-known that Compaq builds Windoze-Only machines exclusively.
Lots of propriety(sp?)-stuff in there.
Still , I heard rumours of people actually getting Linux to work on those misfits.

yeah I know I hate them but it was free from my dad's work... so Im gonna try and get something on it.... it came with windows 95 which is a joke i cant even open up the "My Computer" without waiting 10-20 minutes... He's gonna get me a couple of the Mac Compatible (Knock off macs) and put a ppc version of mandy on it or something along those lines but I wanna get this b*tch up and running at least a command line OS but untill i get the goddamn bios up im stuf with windows.... I thought it be cool to make it all command line get naim on it (command line version of AIM) and then use it as an AIM only box... anyways I know you guys will come up with something..... until then....