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Hi all,

I was hoping to get some suggestions (URLs are fine) as to how to
install Gentoo on the following hardware.

I've got an old (almost 7 years) notebook lying around - the Toshiba
500CDT. It's got:
- no network cards
- no CD ROM
- 120 MHz Pentium 1 processor
- 32MB RAM
- a floppy drive
- 2 spare PCMCIA II slots
- 1.2 GB Hard drive
- some sort of modem (possibly not a Winmodem) top speed = 28.8K

I've got a connection to cable broadband, and I've installed Gentoo on
another PC before, but that was basically following the instructions to
the letter. I can't find instructions for not using a Gentoo universal
or minimal CD.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Thanking you all in advance,

....Ric

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-- Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! --

Sorry... forgot to add...

ric_man wrote:
> I've got an old (almost 7 years) notebook lying around - the Toshiba
> 500CDT. It's got:
> - no network cards

I'd be willing to buy a PCMCIA ethernet card if this helps, but I don't
know which card can be used by Linux, and which card can be detected by
a boot floppy (I'm thinking I've got to do something like that unless
someone else suggests diffrent)...

Suggestions on what to buy that works with Gentoo would be great too...

....Ric

--
If you want to email Ric, use: ric_on_the_go--NO_SPAM@yahoo.com.au
Just remove the "--NO_SPAM"
-- Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! --

Hi,

a PCMCIA network card would be very nice to have indeed, you can try to use
a PLIP network connection but it can be very hard to set up correctly. I
don't really know what cards are supported, i've got a few xircom cards, a
sitecom and a 3com, they all work perfectly.

To install gentoo without using a cdrom drive, take a look at the
alternative installation guide:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml

The most important thing is that you must be able to format your drive,
unpack a stage(x) tarball to it and chroot. I've done it several times by
using the intended swap partition as a temporary linux system using a very
small system, connecting to the server which has the tarball and extracting
it. chrooting to the system and building gentoo from that.

If you need any more help, please let me know

Regards,

Marcel


ric_man wrote:

> Sorry... forgot to add...
>
> ric_man wrote:
>> I've got an old (almost 7 years) notebook lying around - the Toshiba
>> 500CDT. It's got:
>> - no network cards
>
> I'd be willing to buy a PCMCIA ethernet card if this helps, but I don't
> know which card can be used by Linux, and which card can be detected by
> a boot floppy (I'm thinking I've got to do something like that unless
> someone else suggests diffrent)...
>
> Suggestions on what to buy that works with Gentoo would be great too...
>
> ...Ric
>

So anyway, it was like, 13:54 CEST Jul 05 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
ric_man was all like, "Dude,

> I've got an old (almost 7 years) notebook lying around - the Toshiba
> 500CDT. It's got:
> - no network cards
> - no CD ROM
> - 120 MHz Pentium 1 processor
> - 32MB RAM
> - a floppy drive
> - 2 spare PCMCIA II slots
> - 1.2 GB Hard drive
> - some sort of modem (possibly not a Winmodem) top speed = 28.8K
>
> I've got a connection to cable broadband, and I've installed
> Gentoo on another PC before, but that was basically following the
> instructions to the letter. I can't find instructions for not using
> a Gentoo universal or minimal CD.

Without a cd, you're pretty much stuck with the option of getting
some sort of network connection for it. I have little experience with
pcmcia here, and I can't really suggest a card that's guaranteed to
work with linux. You might take a look at, for example, the debian and
red hat boot floppies and see which modules they provide.

Using a debian boot (either a floppy or network (PXE) boot) and nfs
might be one way to get going. See the "alternative install guide"
for some pointers.

Another alternative is to pull the hd and stick it in another box,
either one with a working linux installation and unpack a suitable
stage3 tarball to it, or one that is able to boot from cd where
you can do some of the basic setup before putting the hd back and
finishing up.

Take note tho, a 1.2G hd may end up being just too small for you to
be able to compile anything large, like gcc, on. Not to mention that
you're probably looking at a few days' worth of bootstrapping if you
don't go for a stage3 install with that cpu and ram.

I have installed gentoo on a sparc-4 (roughly the same age bracket
as a p-120) with 32M ram and 1G hd. I'm not going to do it again.
Maintaining the system to keep it current will probably keep it busy
most of its remaining lifetime with a source-based distribution such
as gentoo.

> --

Add a space to the end of that and you've got a real delimiter.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
14:15:34 up 15 days, 21:26, 2 users, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
Linux 2.6.7 x86_64 GNU/Linux Registered Linux user #261729

ric_man wrote:

> Sorry... forgot to add...
>
> ric_man wrote:
>> I've got an old (almost 7 years) notebook lying around - the Toshiba
>> 500CDT. It's got:
>> - no network cards
>
> I'd be willing to buy a PCMCIA ethernet card if this helps, but I don't
> know which card can be used by Linux, and which card can be detected by
> a boot floppy (I'm thinking I've got to do something like that unless
> someone else suggests diffrent)...
>
> Suggestions on what to buy that works with Gentoo would be great too...
>
> ...Ric
>

there's a plenty of pcmcia eth cards compatible with linux... anyway try to
consider the ones with most generic chips such as realtek, tulip, 3c,
intel... i've used a lot of them without any trouble.

even if i've installed linux on a p166 with only 48MB of ram, i do not
suggest you it so much... if you don't want just playing a bit with some
shell... otherwise - if you want really use it for a study purposes, buy
the tanenbaum's: "Operating Systems: implementing and developing" where
minix 2.0 is included... it was last printed in around 1996 but it's still
a best seller for everyone who wants to understand completely how the
operation systems work.

minix is very light, and then the book is composed of 40% of theory
anticipations and 60% of sources where every row is documented and
explained.

PS: tanenbaums was the teacher of linus, and he was the one who
distributed/developed minix - and if you see it, you just understand that
linus did not invented nothing new , besides its free distribution.
--
remove mailto__ on reply

Hekaton Keires enlightened us with:
> even if i've installed linux on a p166 with only 48MB of ram, i do
> not suggest you it so much...

I've installed it on a 386 SX 25 MHz with 4 MB ram and a 80 MB
harddisk. It was our email server! And yes, that was in the time where
we didn't receive spam at all ;-)

Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

Hekaton Keires wrote:

> PS: tanenbaums was the teacher of linus, and he was the one who
> distributed/developed minix - and if you see it, you just understand that
> linus did not invented nothing new , besides its free distribution.

I didn't know that... I thought Torvalds went to Uni of Helsinki and
Tannenbaum was a lecturer at the Uni of Ansterdamm.

The main reason I was looking at installing Linux on the Toshiba 500CDT
is at the moment it's running Windows 95 (although it hasn't been
switched on for about 6 months). I was just hoping to convert it to
Linux so I could use X and a basic windows manager, and just hook into
the broadband connection I have so it can surf the web. Nothing
ctirical. Just something else to surf the web with.

Thanks for the suggestions, especially with the hardware.

....Ric

--
If you want to email Ric, use: ric_on_the_go--NO_SPAM@yahoo.com.au
Just remove the "--NO_SPAM"
-- Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! --

Marcel Camijn wrote:
> a PCMCIA network card would be very nice to have indeed, you can try to use
> a PLIP network connection but it can be very hard to set up correctly. I
> don't really know what cards are supported, i've got a few xircom cards, a
> sitecom and a 3com, they all work perfectly.

PLIP is something I have not considered. I've got a reasonably powered
Toshiba P20, and I guess I could off load the bulk of the compilation
onto it. Also thanks for the URL. I always thought the Alt Install guide
was just for howto Knoppix install Gentoo.

....Ric

--
If you want to email Ric, use: ric_on_the_go--NO_SPAM@yahoo.com.au
Just remove the "--NO_SPAM"
-- Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! --

Johan Lindquist wrote:
> Using a debian boot (either a floppy or network (PXE) boot) and nfs
> might be one way to get going. See the "alternative install guide"
> for some pointers.

Does Gentoo not make a boot floppy for these occasions? I guess I would
be after a floppy with a kernel, and networking enabled on it. Also BASH
and some networking tools would be good. I'll have a look at the Debian
distribution's floppy. That's for that... great suggestion!

> Another alternative is to pull the hd and stick it in another box,
> either one with a working linux installation and unpack a suitable
> stage3 tarball to it, or one that is able to boot from cd where
> you can do some of the basic setup before putting the hd back and
> finishing up.

I don't know anyone else with a PC as old as the Toshiba 500CDT. Still,
that's another good suggestion. From my understanding, Toshiba Australia
have long stopped supporting the 500CDT (well it stopped after 5 years
of the model's release).

> Take note tho, a 1.2G hd may end up being just too small for you to
> be able to compile anything large, like gcc, on. Not to mention that
> you're probably looking at a few days' worth of bootstrapping if you
> don't go for a stage3 install with that cpu and ram.

I've thought about that. I was going to try to start with Stage1, but if
that was no good, then try getting my Toshiba P20 to do some of the work
via distcc. If those two failed, I would go straight to Stage3. My
intent with the box is to try to get a desktop up (like wmaker or
something else "light"), and then to install a browser, and maybe a few
word processing applications. It'll just be used mainly to surf the web.

> I have installed gentoo on a sparc-4 (roughly the same age bracket
> as a p-120) with 32M ram and 1G hd. I'm not going to do it again.
> Maintaining the system to keep it current will probably keep it busy
> most of its remaining lifetime with a source-based distribution such
> as gentoo.

That gives me hope... I don't think I'll worry about maintaining it that
much, but at least I know it will be an option. I'm hoping with distcc
set up I can palm off some of the compilation work to a more modern box.

>>--
> Add a space to the end of that and you've got a real delimiter.

Mozilla does the "--" for me, and in the case of this, it has a space on
the end.

....Ric

--
If you want to email Ric, use: ric_on_the_go--NO_SPAM@yahoo.com.au
Just remove the "--NO_SPAM"
-- Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! --

So anyway, it was like, 12:16 CEST Jul 06 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
ric_man was all like, "Dude,
> Johan Lindquist wrote:

> Does Gentoo not make a boot floppy for these occasions?

Far as I know, there's no gentoo boot floppy.

>> Another alternative is to pull the hd and stick it in another box,

> I don't know anyone else with a PC as old as the Toshiba 500CDT.
> Still, that's another good suggestion.

You can still generate code that will run on any 386, even if the
compiler is run on newer hardware, so preparing the hd in another box
(even to the point of getting grub on it, possibly) wouldn't be so
difficult.

> It'll just be used mainly to surf the web.

You might run into some issues with x11 as well, if you don't take
very good care in partitioning your disk. I probably wouldn't make
more than three partitions, root, /boot and swap.

In a pinch, you can mount something via nfs (or samba) to use as
$PORTAGE_TMP, but that's probably going to make the compiles even
slower.

> Mozilla does the "--" for me, and in the case of this, it has a
> space on the end.

You're completely correct, my mistake. Apparently slrn tries to be
clever and only considers the last "-- " a signature delimiter now.
That's abit of a disappointment, I hope it's configurable.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
14:21:29 up 16 days, 21:32, 6 users, load average: 1.08, 1.06, 1.05
Linux 2.6.7 x86_64 GNU/Linux Registered Linux user #261729