Linux on a Ncr 3150?
 

Hi,

I just got a Ncr 3150 laptop over eBay, and it is being delivered to me right now. I was wondering if Linux was compatible with with it, or if you could point me to a site (or tell me) the system specs for the laptop. I know it has a 486sx 25mhz processor, and 4mb of ram, and thats it.

Could someone help me out here?

Thanks,

- Brad

Your best bet with a 486 25Mb is probably going to be Slack, and an older Slackware at that, something around the 7.0, 7.1 era, there's a boot kernel for it called lowmem.i, the normal bare.i is going to take at least 8mb of RAM to run. You can pretty much give up on X windows. Also, you'll have to be careful as to what to install. Even back to Slackware 4.x-ish there was over 1/2 a Gb of software and I give odds that this thing is coming with a Harddrive somewhere in the 300Mb range.

I've gotten newer linux distros up and running on P1 75s and one 486 66dx, but this puppy is pretty old, its definately do-able though.

Luck,

Finegan

I know what to install on it, I just need the specs on it because the linux cd might not come with the Pcmcia drivers, so I might have to find them myself.

I found a 4mb laptop/desktop computer tutorial here: http://website.lineone.net/~brichard...b_Laptops.html

It's a good one, no doubt.

And oh yeah, it has a 120mb hard drive, so I might have to get an external pcmcia drive enclosure and put a regular hard drive in it :P.

Tiny linux or NetBSD
 

Hi,

I also have this laptop. But in a 12mb config.
There are linux distributions designed for such small
machines. One good is Tiny linux. But it is based on an old
kernel. http://tiny.seul.org/

There is still one chance to have an uptodate system.
Just use NetBSD. If you have a -reasonable- PC to host
a kernel compilation, just go and cut one down to the needs
of your NCR 3150. I made it on the laptop, it tool ~20 hrs
to get compiled, but I had a 800k kernel at the end. And
NetBSD shall be faster than linux.

If you by an additional 8mb RAM, ou will be able to install
Xfree and play with icewm for example !

What I'am now experimenting on my NCR 3150 is he usage
of Compact flash cards. I wanted to use it as an installation
medium, but the NetBSD kernel seems to have timeouts on
it...

Good hack !