Any Fedora that would run SANE/SSHD on an ancient 486sx with 8MB RAM?

[Fernando Cassia]

I wonder if there's any Fedora (1.0? :) that would run on a 486sx-33
system with 8MB of RAM.

I don't need a GUI. My intent is to connect an ancient SCSI based
scanner through a PCMCIA SCSI interface, and run SANE on it. Perhaps
invoking SANE over SSH... from a modern system...

Or maybe I'd need to look at another distro with current kernel that
still supports ISA-PCMCIA? (DSL?)

Thanks in advance...
FC

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/08/2011 10:36 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> I wonder if there's any Fedora (1.0? :) that would run on a 486sx-33
> system with 8MB of RAM.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Early Fedoras had memory demands in the order of 64MB RAM 
(I did run Fedora on i586's with 64MB RAM), current ones are in the
> 512MB RAM range. Apart of this, an i486sx would be insufficient for

Fedora (Old ones required an i586, newer one at least i686).

Ralf

[Fernando Cassia]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Ralf Corsepius  wrote:
> Short answer: No.

Mmmm now that I think of it, ... I will install and use 32bit OS/2
Warp 3.0... It ran OK on 4MB RAM systems. In fact, that same laptop
ran OS/2 2.1 -the previous version, with 8MB RAM as minimum suggested
memory- although sluggisly with a lot of swapping if you attempted to
run more than one ram-hungry app.

And there's a port of SANE for it, too...
http://www.fbakan.de/sane-os2.htm

[Just pasting the URL above in case it gets indexed by the search
engines and it helps someone else with the same needs]

Thanks everyone for their replies.
FC

[Digimer]

On 03/08/2011 08:49 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Ralf Corsepius  wrote:
> > Short answer: No.
>
> Mmmm now that I think of it, ... I will install and use 32bit OS/2
> Warp 3.0... It ran OK on 4MB RAM systems. In fact, that same laptop
> ran OS/2 2.1 -the previous version, with 8MB RAM as minimum suggested
> memory- although sluggisly with a lot of swapping if you attempted to
> run more than one ram-hungry app.
>
> And there's a port of SANE for it, too...
> http://www.fbakan.de/sane-os2.htm
>
> [Just pasting the URL above in case it gets indexed by the search
> engines and it helps someone else with the same needs]
>
> Thanks everyone for their replies.
> FC

It sounds like you've already decided on a solution. That said, the
predecessor to Fedora was Red Hat Linux. Version 7.3 was excellent for
it's day, and I believe it would run on a 486. Red Hat split into what
we know as Fedora and RHEL after Red Hat v9. Though v8 and 9 marked
their switch to Gnome (from Enlightenment) and, iirc, had much heavier
footprints.

[Patrick Bartek]

--- On Tue, 3/8/11, Fernando Cassia  wrote:
> I wonder if there's any Fedora (1.0?
> :) that would run on a 486sx-33
> system with 8MB of RAM.

Why does it have to specifically be Fedora?
> I don't need a GUI. My intent is to connect an ancient SCSI
> based
> scanner through a PCMCIA SCSI interface, and run SANE on
> it. Perhaps
> invoking SANE over SSH... from a modern system...

Since you don't need a GUI, then most any Linux will do.  I suggest you take a look at Slackware.  It gives you the best control of what gets installed or not of any distro I know, including a choice of several "installer" kernels depending on your install needs.  So, you might be able to get a more or less contemporary 2.6 kernel version on that 486 and not have to go back 10 or more years to find something that works.  Although, the 8MB of RAM will be the problem.  Of course, there are a "tiny" Linuxes out there to choose from.

B

[Robert Myers]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:36 AM, Fernando Cassia  wrote:
> I wonder if there's any Fedora (1.0? :) that would run on a 486sx-33
> system with 8MB of RAM.
>
> I don't need a GUI. My intent is to connect an ancient SCSI based
> scanner through a PCMCIA SCSI interface, and run SANE on it. Perhaps
> invoking SANE over SSH... from a modern system...
>
> Or maybe I'd need to look at another distro with current kernel that
> still supports ISA-PCMCIA? (DSL?)

You could probably knock on doors and get better hardware than that
around here, and people would be more than happy to get rid of it.
Don't you know anyone like that?

Robert.