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Re: WW2 computer
Yeah, my Uncle had an old IBM 386SX. The CMOS battery died and the only
way to get into the BIOS was to use a boot floppy. So then the floppy
drive died. The replacement drive (proprietary IBM only drive.._ was
like $400. This when regular floppy drives were like $20-$30.
It was ridiculous.
So, he gave up and bought a good 'ole clone. The whole new machine (A
486 somehting) was only slightly more expensive than that IBM floppy
drive.
Oh, and then there's IBM's MCA (microchannel) bus. As far as I know,
Linux support for this bus type is quite poor, as the specs were
guarded..
So, in short, it's probably not worth your time.
Having said that, you can download Debian and install it from floppies.
(about 14 of them) but good luck getting the other components (like the
ethernet card etc.) working in it.
Ben
On Sun, 2002-01-20 at 00:43, Cyberclops wrote:
> My feeling is it's too old too waste your time with,
> although it could make a firewall or something. One
> problem with IBM's in general is the hardware is very
> proprietary. Many are donated to schools, but if one
> thing is broken they can't afford to fix them. In fact
> replacement parts are very rare.
>
> Tony Horsley wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone. I was given an old comp to tinker with
> > today, it has windows 3.1 (before my time) so I havent
> > learned much about it yet. Its called IBM PS2
> > mod56sx.....I think the hard drive is about 78MB
> > ...unk about modem or sound, it has vga
> > monitor......anybody familiar with this, and whether I
> > might could get libranet in it??? it only has a floppy
> > drive right now. Ivve searched on google but w/out
> > much success so far as to tech info on this relic.
> > Tony Horsley
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