Thomas Taylor wrote:
Hi All:
I've got an old 486 computer (Dolch PAC). It's what was called a semi-portable computer - requires AC power. It's housed in a ruggedized case and the only media it can use is a built-in floppy drive. It has two serial ports (mouse is on one) and a parallel port. It also has a network port, supposedly 10 MHz, but I haven't been able to get it working. The bus structure is ISA with room for two cards.
It currently has Windbloze 95 on it. I would like to replace that with FC4
This would be a very pain-filled process.
How much disk do you have? Unless it's extraordinarily large for a 486, quit now. It will not work.
How much RAM? As I recall the 486 is limited to 16 Mbytes, and that's nowhere near enough.
but don't have a way to do it currently. I was thinking of getting one of the CD-ROM external devices that uses the parallel port for communication (called a backpack originally). There are a couple of these on ebay but I'm not sure if it would work as the BIOS doesn't allow booting from anything except the floppy or hard drive.
Look for a machine with, at least, 512 Mbytes disk and 8 Mbytes RAM: with such a machine you have some prospect of getting a really old distro up.