Here's a
link of some archived install reviews on that laptop. I just glanced at one of them and it looks like they used an old version of Mandrake. So I would try Mandriva or PCLinux OS.
How much RAM is in the machine? That may prohibit a full install of either of those. For old machines, I typically use Debian and install a base install (command line only) then apt-get install X, a lightweight window manager (like XFCE, Icewm, etc), and lightweight applications...