[GRLUG] Old isa motherboard & linux

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Cprossu <cprossu at gmail.com> wrote:
> From the sounds of it I'd say we need to know exact hardware to continue. a
> 286 'made into a 486' could mean anything from a sane upgrade (swapping out
> the motherboard) to an insane upgrade (like the intel inboard 386 I have for
> one of my IBM 5150 PC's which uses the original motherboard and is
> incompatible with darn near everything).

Most likely, it's one of those old "Overdrive" adapters. I don't know
how, exactly, they function. Back then, the processor was only a
processor, and you *could* do things like this. These days, a
processor is also a memory controller, and also requires special
understanding with the BIOS for voltage regulation and the like.

> If you are unable to get us a model
> number or brand of the motherboard, see if you can snap a pic of the
> motherboard. Depending on the era of 486 if it was indeed a motherboard
> swap, there's a slim possibility it could have pci slots.  If you can find
> out nothing else, find out if it's using 72pin or 30pin memory. The kernel
> you end up using will be highly memory dependent..

You can still use a modern kernel with really old hardware. You just
need to strip everything you're not going to use (so, just about
everything), and optionally enable stuff like "optimize for size".
Yanking out a lot of enabled-by-default stuff would also help.

-- 
:wq