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
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.
Anyone got a suggestion?
I'd check on how much memory it has. Linux likes to have more RAM
than Win95 is comfortable in. As far as booting and running,
you may try to boot using Smart Boot Manager (SBM)
http://btmgr.webframe.org/
I have used it to boot successfully Knoppix LiveCD on a 486 machine.
If it has an ATA drive interface (which I suppose it does) it ought
to be easy to add a CDROM drive to it, and boot SBM from floppy.
I don't know whether SBM can manage a boot from a parallel I/F CDROM
drive. I know that it can manage ATAPI.
Mike
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