[SOLVED] Old Compaq Win ME won't Install Mint 13,14,15,16

2cen · 05-17-2014, 06:09 PM

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.

John VV · 05-17-2014, 06:27 PM

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

EDDY1 · 05-17-2014, 06:30 PM

wins me is very outdated & some or most of those machnes needed to be booted from floppy to load cd drivers for install from cd.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.

Emerson · 05-17-2014, 06:35 PM

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.

yancek · 05-17-2014, 07:11 PM

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.

jefro · 05-17-2014, 07:20 PM

May have to try something like Slitaz or some versions of Puppy or DSL.

rokytnji · 05-17-2014, 07:32 PM

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.

hilyard · 05-17-2014, 09:14 PM

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.

k3lt01 · 05-17-2014, 10:25 PM

Without knowing the specs of the machine it is really difficult to give worthwhile suggestions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

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.

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EDDY1

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

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

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.

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emerson

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!

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yancek

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!

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

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.

2cen · 05-18-2014, 01:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rokytnji

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!