Linux on a 486SX • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#51

Post by EvanAnderson » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #43

Technically Linux could once upon a time run on a 386, but because the kernel is a non-modular spaghetti-code mess, they had to deprecate 386 support to fix something else. It's only a matter of time before 486 is gone too.

I thought the lack of the CMPXCHG instruction was what initially caused Linux to drop 386 support.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#52

Post by tinus_hn » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

outsidein wrote: post #13

outsidein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a fun story where Linux saved my live. Back in the 90‘ we had a Clipper / dBASE based DOS app used for capturing orders in a call center after TV commercials. In this case a prime TV show to generate donations. Full house with >100 agents busy. Then the Novell Netware server crashed, and was unable to mount the disks. We managed to switch the users to an older server so they could continue to work. But it firs…

The HP Laserjet 2100 M (PCL and PostScript) is still running. Someone interested into the original PCL Language book which came with the printer?

Be aware that these old HP printers consume a rather large amount of energy no matter whether they are in use or in standby.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#53

Post by mmastrac » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #40

By the time I got into installing Linux (1996+), I always seemed to be able to find salvageable pentium machines 166Mhz and above. But, my sister ended up returning my old AMD 486 DX4 120Mhz after they bought a new computer. I threw FreeBSD on it for a bit. It ran really well! I'll forever miss this era of computing. The internet was brand new, machines were often Frankensteins built out of spare parts. Computer Shop…

My homelab is still cobbled together like this. I bought a 10-year-old kvm, used switches, a used 1u server, etc.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#54

Post by saint_angels » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #2

Awesome and thanks for documenting the process! There's large DOS communities with people running vintage hardware, but not much I know of for linux.

I think running a vintage DOS system is popular because there is a lot of DOS games. Linux doesn't have as much hardware/OS-dependent nostalgic software.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#55

Post by gattilorenz » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

fortran77 wrote: post #31

ToddWBurgess wrote: post #23

My first Linux install was in 1994, on a 486DX/2-66 with 8MB of RAM. At the time it was considered standard hardware and Linux ran really well on it.

I remember when Linux finally got "good enough" in the early 90s and I switched from SCO Xenix and SCO Unix to Linux. Many people ran Linux on 486 machines. Other than the nostalgia of seeing the old boot loaders and boot screens, there's nothing special about this "feat"

> Many people ran Linux on 486 machines. Other than the nostalgia of seeing the old boot loaders and boot screens, there's nothing special about this "feat"

Many people ran Windows on 486. But it was Windows 3.x, or 95 at most. If you managed to get Windows 10 to boot on one, surely that would be a feat...

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#56

Post by 13of40 » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #40

By the time I got into installing Linux (1996+), I always seemed to be able to find salvageable pentium machines 166Mhz and above. But, my sister ended up returning my old AMD 486 DX4 120Mhz after they bought a new computer. I threw FreeBSD on it for a bit. It ran really well! I'll forever miss this era of computing. The internet was brand new, machines were often Frankensteins built out of spare parts. Computer Shop…

In 1995, I was stationed at an Army base about 10 miles from the DMZ in Korea, and for the first time in my life I saved up enough money to build a computer from modern parts instead of scavenging them from thrift stores and dumpsters. So I went AWOL for a day and went down to a place in Seoul called the Yongsan Electronics Market. To my young American mind, this was a place straight out of a William Gibson novel. Imagine a multi-storey sprawling mall covering about three blocks, with modern stores selling the latest LG stuff at the center, but in the alleys and passageways you might run into a pile of cases being scrapped, or an old man pulling a cart full of dead hard drives, or turn a corner and find someone hand building 20 video cards on a plastic table. But I knew what I was there for, and I bought the parts for a 486DX4/100mhz, plus a used monitor and keyboard, and brought them back on the train. Somewhere I acquired a Slackware Linux CD, and when I got it all put together it was like a dream. I count that era as when CPUs got powerful enough that we just had extra processing power for the little details. But I digress. On the first night I had it, I decided to leave it running overnight and set up a cron job to wake me up for morning formation. Of course, it froze up in the middle of the night and I woke up late and got yelled at.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#57

Post by InvaderFizz » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

h2odragon wrote: post #27

IDE -> Compact Flash adapters are good for hardware of this era. new CF cards are cheap. Booting from CDROM was still iffy and some BIOS might not like some drives and so on as i recall.

There are three tools useful on machines of this era:

1. The aforementioned IDE/CF adapter. It helps that it's a dumb PCB since CF speaks IDE natively.

2. A Gotek Floppy Emulator (With the FlashFloppy firmware)

3. A SCSI2SD SCSI emulator.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#58

Post by SigmundA » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

My first job at computer store in high school I worked without pay initially just to get parts to build a 486-DX with it wonderful floating point unit so I could finally play Falcon 3.0 properly.

That same job taught me networking (Novell) and got me programming business apps in MS Access and the rest is history.

Unfortunately I didn't get into Linux until much later.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#59

Post by UncleSlacky » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

I did something similar with a Compaq Contura 4/25c about 15-20 years ago. It had 8 Mb RAM so I was able to install Slackware 3.9 (IIRC) via floppies with a standalone X session running Netscape. Later I put Win 95c on it (again, via floppies) which ran fairly well.

Re: Linux on a 486SX

#60

Post by my123 » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #49

nousermane wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. "e" in "eLILO" stands for "EFI". But then (U)EFI is an OS in itself, you can boot Linux directly from it, no bootloader needed: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB

> But then (U)EFI is an OS in itself Would it be accurate to describe (U)EFI as being like MS-DOS (i.e. single-tasking), but running in protected mode?

Indeed, UEFI is the modern DOS.