90-200mhz pentium doorstop pc NEEDED

[haywirepc]

The work on our highly optimized linux distro continues...

Its inspired alot by amigaos, fast, small, and very efficient.

Anyone can test or display their linux distro running great on modern hardware, but one of our focuses has been on running it on very old hardware.

My oldest test machine is a 500mhz Pentium with 256 megs of ram.

I'd like to get a 90mhz pentium-200mhz Pentium with 128megs of ram for
testing purposes to really show it off alot more. I'm fairly certain it will run
well even on machines that old, but I need to be sure.

Runs fantastical at 500mhz and I'd like to see it on even lower spec hardware
before our first release (hopefully within 6 months if all goes well)

If anyone can provide me with an inexpensive machine of this low spec for this purpose, I would sincerely appreciate it. The ebay prices if you can even find a pc so old are ridiculous, and I'd really like to test this as much as possible on as low spec as possible hardware before our initial release. I really need to do this so I know if my bull**** about how optimized and efficient it runs on really old hardware is entirely accurate or not...

[Darth_X]

The work on our highly optimized linux distro continues...

Its inspired alot by amigaos, fast, small, and very efficient.

Anyone can test or display their linux distro running great on modern hardware, but one of our focuses has been on running it on very old hardware.

My oldest test machine is a 500mhz Pentium with 256 megs of ram.

I'd like to get a 90mhz pentium-200mhz Pentium with 128megs of ram for
testing purposes to really show it off alot more. I'm fairly certain it will run
well even on machines that old, but I need to be sure.

Runs fantastical at 500mhz and I'd like to see it on even lower spec hardware
before our first release (hopefully within 6 months if all goes well)

If anyone can provide me with an inexpensive machine of this low spec for this purpose, I would sincerely appreciate it. The ebay prices if you can even find a pc so old are ridiculous, and I'd really like to test this as much as possible on as low spec as possible hardware before our initial release. I really need to do this so I know if my bull**** about how optimized and efficient it runs on really old hardware is entirely accurate or not...

I'm sure your local craigslist or kijiji has some $20 PCs.

You might try down-clocking the processor in the BIOS.

[DamageX]

Does the machine need to have a CD-ROM? Ethernet port? Minimum size harddisk?

What is the linux distro you are testing?

[johnklos]

GNU/Linux is supposed to be portable, right? Cross compile it for a slower architecture, like a PowerMac 7600 or an HP Jornada or a Linksys.

[nicholas]

I just threw away a 200MHz K6. :/

[danwood]

Why not just emulate that spec in virtual box?

[desiv]

You might try down-clocking the processor in the BIOS.

That might not work well..
Had a power event here a few days ago, and my Linux PC just turned off..
No biggie, powered it back up, and it crashed..
Uh Oh..
Was having random hangs on the way up, although sometimes it would boot all the way up and work..
Figured the power hit damaged the MB...
Then, during one of the reboots, I noticed that it said 1500...
1500?  It's not a 1.5Ghz, it's a 2.1Ghz..
So I check, and the BIOS was back to defaults... (slowest CPU clocking)

Set it back to where it should be, 2100, and it's booted fine ever since..

So downclocking might not be very stable...

desiv

[haywirepc]

I need a machine with any kind of cd-rom, 128megs ram and as low speed (90-200mhz) as possible. Ethernet port probably necessary. I don't think I care on
the hard drive size, but a usb port would be nice I don't recall when machines started having those, but would like one for usb thumb drive.

I never knew you could emulate specs in virtualbox? I will look that over, but I prefer testing on real hardware.

The linux distro I am testing is one myself and a few friends have been working on....

[DamageX]

The only thing I have with a working CD-ROM drive is an old laptop with a broken screen which can only take 96MB of RAM. Maybe you could just open up your P3-500 system and temporarily swap out the CPU for a P2 or Celeron and take out one stick of RAM or something.

[Ilwrath]

I'd like to get a 90mhz pentium-200mhz Pentium with 128megs of ram for
testing purposes to really show it off alot more.

Ya might have a tough time getting a system of that spec.  Most of the 486 dx/pentium systems in that era still used SIMMS, and maxed out at 4x16mb SIMMS (64MB).

I have an old Pentium 1 / ?? mhz (probably a 75, but maybe 90) sitting around in the basement collecting dust.  It is maxed with 4x SIMMS, but I don't remember if they were 8 or 16 MB (32 or 64MB of RAM).  I know it isn't 128.  Has some old PCI video (maybe an ATI RAGE?), 2x NICs, (probably 3COM ISA 3c509 boards), no sound, and some ancient ATAPI CDROM.  Might have a USB port, but I don't think so.  

Nothing was wrong with the computer, itself, when it was put away.  In fact, it was routinely getting uptime measured in months.  Right up until it's hard drive crashed over a decade ago, that is.  I built a new box, and removed the crashed drive, slaved it to the new system, and recovered all the data I could, then threw all the old stuff into storage, where I haven't touched it, since.  I'm sure it's not worth the bother of shipping from Detroit to Philly, but if you know someone in the area who'd pick it up for ya, it's yours for the incredibly low price of free.

[desiv]

I know I've got a PC with an IDT Winchip (180Mhz).
I don't remember how much memory it has tho, might not be much...
I had it in my Arcade cabinet running Vantage.  ;-)  Pulled it out a bit ago for a 60-n-1 board I got a deal on..

I'll see how much memory it has..

desiv