New to Linux - BIOS before 2000?

[Gilboa Davara]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Mercury Rising
<mercuryrising11 at gmail.com>wrote:

> hi,
>
> I got so tired of windows problems - viruses, screen - computer freezes, I
> just stuck in a Linux for non-geeks CD and loaded it.  It wiped my hard
> drive as expected, but I kept getting an error near the end of the install.
> A friend gave me another Linux load, but it give me an error saying my BIOS
> was 1997 and I needed a a 2000 BIOS or better.  The machine has a Pentium 3
> with 550 MHz CPU with over 700 Megs memory but a small hard drive of just 10
> Gigs with a swapable drive in pull out bay with a grab bar.  I was using
> Windows XP Pro 2000 for OS.  I installed a USB 2.0 on it that worked most of
> the time.  I have done a lot of Google searches to see if I could find Linux
> and a GUI that would be as easy as a Mac or XP environment for a 1997 BIOS
> machine.
>
> Any ideas on a good Linux load for such an old machine?  With the XP I
> could print to a office jet 7410 all-in-one printer, scanner fax with no
> problems.
>
> Browsing the Internet was ok, but video - youtube was mostly non-worable -
> mostly too slow.
>
>
I'm running CentOS 5.4 / i386 on a 12 y/o Dell Inspiron 7000 (PII366/256MB)
notebook without any issue.
I also tested Fedora 11 on this machine and it worked just fine. (Somewhat
slower than CentOS, so I decided to stay with CentOS)
At least in my case, the BIOS date is not an issue.

- Gilboa
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