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Hello!
So i have this old hp laptop, and want to triple boot Windows98, Windows Xp and a linux distro(possibly puppy?).
The laptop has a Pentium 3 850mhz, 128mb ram, a 10gb hdd, and a s3 savage ix gpu with 8mb of vram. I already ordered some ram(512mb which is the max it can support), and i might upgrade to a Pentium 3 1.13Ghz.
So i would like to triple boot, because i want win98 for retro gaming, winXp for some very simple office use(need to work on ms access 2007 for my school), and i would also like to have puppy or an other distro.
First of all, is this possible? Right now i only have Win98 installed.
And no. I cant afford to buy something new :P I am Greek, what did u expect :P
Thanks in advance!
While you can, I'm not sure why you would, with hardware of this specification. It's rather like enlisting a 1981 Datsun for drag racing. I would suggest installing Windows XP only. Run your Linux distro from a Live CD via optical media or thumb drive. Run your Win98 games in XP using compatibility mode:
Not sure still. At one time you could fool the install and make some swap to get up to the full package 192Mb ram. Otherwise you'd have to select a smaller version. Down to 16Mb is possible with swap.
Just checked Anti-x won't run either. It needs at least 256 MB of RAM.
Slitaz requires 192 MB of RAM for the core system and 48 MB of RAM for text mode and X.
Running Puppy Live should work.
Code:
Minimum Hardware Requirements for Puppy Linux 4.1.2
233MHZ processor.
128MB RAM.
512MB free hard drive space to create an optional save file.
No hard drive required to boot a Live Disc.
CD-ROM any speed.
Pick xvesa instead of xorg at boot up screen. I have a savage grahics chip and it does not play well with the newer Xorg shipped with newer distros. The single and only savage linux graphics developer and xorg don't communicate always.
Another edit: When installing Puppy . Use grub4dos to handle all Windows and Puppy install booting dutoies. Install to mbr. Not grub legacy. Grb4dos is the same as grub legacy. It just piclks up windows installs better.
I've been multibooting 3 and more OSes since Piii was current hardware. Having both WXP and W98 is readily doable alongside Linux. Start by making C: a small partition, as little as ~60MB, installing 98 first, and giving XP and 98 separate logical partitions to keep their systems on.
Any Linux I've ever tried could be installed in less RAM than its advertised minimum by doing all partitioning and formatting in advance of beginning any installation, including a swap partition, then making sure to enable swap immediately on installation initialization manually if the installer doesn't do it automatically.
I have a web page originally created many moons ago that includes a partitioning layout roughly similar to what you'd need to do what you propose. 98 doesn't need much space, 200MB ought to be more than plenty, depending on how much space your games demand. Giving XP more than 1000MB would probably be a waste. IOW, most of the disk can be devoted to Linux. Also explained there is another key to making and keeping multiboot working is keeping Grub off the MBR, instead on at least one primary partition, plus on each Linux / filesystem.
Location: Montreal, Quebec and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia CANADA
Distribution: Arch, AntiX, ArtiX
Posts: 1,363
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Goustoulos
Hello!
So i have this old hp laptop, and want to triple boot Windows98, Windows Xp and a linux distro(possibly puppy?).
The laptop has a Pentium 3 850mhz, 128mb ram, a 10gb hdd, and a s3 savage ix gpu with 8mb of vram. I already ordered some ram(512mb which is the max it can support), and i might upgrade to a Pentium 3 1.13Ghz.
So i would like to triple boot, because i want win98 for retro gaming, winXp for some very simple office use(need to work on ms access 2007 for my school), and i would also like to have puppy or an other distro.
First of all, is this possible? Right now i only have Win98 installed.
And no. I cant afford to buy something new :P I am Greek, what did u expect :P
Thanks in advance!
Hi Goustoulos,
... similarly to mrmazda, I've done extensive rejuvenating of old laptops, even a couple of Pentium II 400 MHz machines with 6GB hdd .. hours of fun. That said, here are my personal opinions:
1) Windows XP will be a challenge to use with only 128 Mb of RAM. It will be painfully slow. I would honestly not bother with this option. If you DO upgrade to 512 MB, you at least have a chance of remaining sane and could try XP.
2) I would not bother upgrading the CPU from a PIII at 850 MHz to a PIII at 1.13 GHz. I would expect the performance gain to be almost imperceptible.
3) The display adapter will cause you issues in most modern linux distros, assuming you are planning on using a desktop environment based on X. X11 stopped supporting Savage / S3 back around version 1.12 if I remember correctly. You would be forced to run in generic VESA mode. Believe me, I tried this as well as every workaround I could find while troubleshooting the issue on an old IBM Thinkpad T22 several years ago. I eventually decided to downgrade to the last version of X that supported the Savage / S3 and froze the installation (it was Arch Linux, so freezing the installation was an important step, given the rolling release nature of that distro). So, for the most reliable linux solution I found for this type of situation, see my comment below at 5).
4) Win98 should not be a problem, as long as you can find the installation source and, hopefully, all of the patches required to bring it up to its last state. It will run fine on that hardware, at least.
5) My best results with linux on hardware of this generation were with Puppy Linux - specifically the 2.14x "Classic Pup" series maintained by ttuuxxx. This distro provided the best balance between reliable support of old hardware and the most up to date versions of the usual Puppy software given those constraints. I ran it in "frugal install" mode, but if your disk space is an issue, it can be run entirely in memory off a CD.
6) I would choose Syslinux as a boot loader. Although GRUB is the more common choice these days, I found that I had problems using anything but the "legacy" or "grub-4-dos" versions of GRUB. Syslinux up to version 6.02, I believe, just worked.
7) So, finally, and to answer your main question, yes it is possible to do what you are proposing. I strongly suggest that you look at this as a project and go forward only if you have the time to devote to it and that this is an interest, if not hobby, of yours. It will require patience and probably a lot of trial and error.
I look forward to hearing about your results if you decide to go forward with this.
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