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Old 05-17-2014, 06:09 PM   #1
2cen
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Old Compaq Win ME won't Install Mint 13,14,15,16


After each install failed, I tried booting to Gparted, and finally to Gparted live The error message I'm getting is the Job Control is off. How do I turn it on, and how do I find it to turn it on? I'm not interested in saving the Win ME. I just want to put Linux on it.
 
Old 05-17-2014, 06:27 PM   #2
John VV
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How much ram is in this 1998/1999 computer???
64 meg ram ?
or 48 meg ram

there is NO major distro that will install on a old computer like that

now
there are some like "AntiX" or "Damn Small Linux" or "Puppy linux" that will install on some old hardware
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 06:30 PM   #3
EDDY1
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wins me is very outdated & some or most of those machnes needed to be booted from floppy to load cd drivers for install from cd. If I recall floppy is only 128Mb. Maybe 1 can use the netinstall from floppy. Not sure though.
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 06:35 PM   #4
Emerson
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A box like this will serve you great as a local mail and file server, router, web server for your personal website. Anything GUI I'd forget about.
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 07:11 PM   #5
yancek
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A 3 1/2 inch floppy held 1.44MB so it would take about 1400 floppies to hold the data a 2GB flash holds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

So 2cen, the first thing is do you have a CD drive and can you boot the machine from it? Do you have any information on your computer hardware? You should get that and then compare it to the minimum hardware requirements for any Linux distribution you want to try. You can do an online search for 'Linux on older hardware' which should produce some results.
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 07:20 PM   #6
jefro
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May have to try something like Slitaz or some versions of Puppy or DSL.
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 07:32 PM   #7
rokytnji
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Quote:
d Compaq Win ME won't Install Mint 13,14,15,16
Aint Mint.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/09/...indows-95.html

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/...on-compaq.html

Would you believe I got 75 bucks for that laptop? Back in 2008 though.
Sigh, nobody is biting on my IBM A22M 1000hz 512MB ram wirless XP Laptop though for 50 bucks.
Probably pissed about the Compaq deal.

 
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Old 05-17-2014, 09:14 PM   #8
hilyard
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A Non-PAE 32-bit distro is what is needed to get the old ME machine working.
First, try burning a LiveCD of an appropriate distro like Puppy Slacko 5.7 and running it.
Max out the motherboard's RAM capacity before trying to install any such distro on hard drive.

Last edited by hilyard; 05-17-2014 at 09:16 PM.
 
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Old 05-17-2014, 10:25 PM   #9
k3lt01
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Without knowing the specs of the machine it is really difficult to give worthwhile suggestions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John VV View Post
How much ram is in this 1998/1999 computer???
64 meg ram ?
or 48 meg ram

there is NO major distro that will install on a old computer like that

now
there are some like "AntiX" or "Damn Small Linux" or "Puppy linux" that will install on some old hardware
Windows ME (Millennium Edition) is from 2000, Windows 98 is from 1998, Windows 98SE is from 1999, and Windows XP is from 2001. The machine probably has 128 or 256 MB of RAM.

A 486 kernelled Debian FluxBox would run on it and probably reasonably well considering its age as long as the programs used in it weren't big.
 
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Old 05-18-2014, 01:27 AM   #10
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EDDY1 View Post
wins me is very outdated & some or most of those machnes needed to be booted from floppy to load cd drivers for install from cd. If I recall floppy is only 128Mb. Maybe 1 can use the netinstall from floppy. Not sure though.
Thanks, Eddy! This had a DVD that didn't work on it, and a CD that did, but finally stopped. I've got spares. This is what it has.

Intel III 850Mhz
128 MB Mem
11MB alocated as Video Mem
40 GB hard drive
 
Old 05-18-2014, 01:31 AM   #11
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John VV View Post
How much ram is in this 1998/1999 computer???
64 meg ram ?
or 48 meg ram

there is NO major distro that will install on a old computer like that

now
there are some like "AntiX" or "Damn Small Linux" or "Puppy linux" that will install on some old hardware
Good advice, thanks John! It has 128 megs ram. I finally got XP on it, but IE as the browser kept sticking, and I couldn't get Chrome to install, and then the CD drive stopped working.
 
Old 05-18-2014, 01:36 AM   #12
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Emerson View Post
A box like this will serve you great as a local mail and file server, router, web server for your personal website. Anything GUI I'd forget about.
Hmmm, great ideas. Hadn't thought of that. Thanx, Emerson!
 
Old 05-18-2014, 01:39 AM   #13
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yancek View Post
A 3 1/2 inch floppy held 1.44MB so it would take about 1400 floppies to hold the data a 2GB flash holds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

So 2cen, the first thing is do you have a CD drive and can you boot the machine from it? Do you have any information on your computer hardware? You should get that and then compare it to the minimum hardware requirements for any Linux distribution you want to try. You can do an online search for 'Linux on older hardware' which should produce some results.
Thanx,yancek! I'll have to do that. Thanx again!
 
Old 05-18-2014, 01:42 AM   #14
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro View Post
May have to try something like Slitaz or some versions of Puppy or DSL.
Thanx,jefro! I'll do that. Might do that for my wife's old laptop too.
 
Old 05-18-2014, 01:46 AM   #15
2cen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rokytnji View Post
Aint Mint.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/09/...indows-95.html

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/...on-compaq.html

Would you believe I got 75 bucks for that laptop? Back in 2008 though.
Sigh, nobody is biting on my IBM A22M 1000hz 512MB ram wirless XP Laptop though for 50 bucks.
Probably pissed about the Compaq deal.

Rwo good links, thanx, rokytnji! Much appreciated!
 
  


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