putting Linux on a 386 and what would you suggest
 

I have open to me a stack of old 486 that have been replace at a school with their upgrades.
The computers are compaq 5100 and some compaq desktop pros
They have 810 or 1.6 hard drives .
VIDEO Cirrus Logic 7543
3C509 EtherLink III ISA
standard keyboards
15" Monitors
ball mouse
Not sure about the sound cards yet.
24 to 32 MB ram
I can't seem to get them to boot with cdrom but they do boot with floppy.
All drives are formated clean.
Would like to install a simple Linux on them and give them away to people that can't afford computers in my area (MN)
I have tried DSL but can't get the newtwork card to work.
Debian work fine installing ,finding network etc but I'm not that good with Linux so couldn't get it to run x and a window gui.
Guess I need a little help with this.
Thanks with any help on this.
I don't drive so not able to get to any lug meetings but if someone is close by that could help that would be super great. ( in Ada Mn 45 miles north of fargo.)

Fix typo..........

Do you mean Damn Small Linux (DSL)? If just the card is a issue have you approached their forums for assistance?

I did search there and found someone that posted about a card like that but they never got any help with it so came here next.

Well I download Feather Liunx and ran the live CD and ran fine on this test computer so did the install from Blackbox and everything is working fine .
Just working on adding a users. seems to be a problem with adding users I found on the feather users forum . but think I will get it workout and will be installing a few computers with Feather Linux.