Hi,

I have just found a really old Dell Laptop. From what I can tell, it has a 486, probably 64MB of Ram, and a 1.03 gig hard drive, floppy drive. No USB connection!

When I boot up, it can't find a boot sector, so I am assuming that there is OS installed on the hard disk.

This is what I would like to do with this laptop:

First and formost; I would like to be able to use it as a GPS device for my car. I have looked at the GPS-18(Garmin), and some others. What do you recommend?

Secondly; What distro can I run on this system? Am I going to have to upgrade any hardware to get a distro running?

Any suggestions would help greatly. I have checked out the GPSDrive(gpsdrive.cc) and it looks like a great program.


Thanks for your help!

Besides a working serial port I wouldn't think an upgrade is required. I have only seriously played with the aviation Garmin GPS receivers but I would expect it to be just as good.

slackware is a good distribution that will run on a 486.

How I am going to get slackware on there when it doesnt have an ethernet port, cd-rom drive, or a USB port?

Hmm....
You can try basiclinux or maybe zipslack but you will have to split the file to lots floppies.

You could also remove the drive and connect it a desktop PC to install. This will probably require an adapter IDE cable.

Thats a good idea. But is there a way to boot from USB? I have a laptop hard drive to USB thing. (Forget what its called.)

Now, what about GPS? What device should I buy? That works well with Linux...etc..

Any GPS receiver capable of outputing NMEA 0183 data via RS-232 will work.

You could copy the install files via the USB and then do the actual install on the laptop. Once you decide which distribution we can work on the details.

Ok.

So I would copy the installation files to the hard drive via USB on my other laptop.

How will I execute the files once I put the hard drive back into the old laptop and boot up?