Ancient laptops

[Gas'd Off]

Hello all.
I've been given an ancient Toshiba Tecra laptop that has a speedy 133MGhts pentium, 32MB ram and Win95. It has a USB port but as we know 95 is not USB worthy. My question is, seeing as I'm not able to even load 98 due to capacity limitations of the machine, would I be able to load a Linux type OS on it? And if so would I then be able to use the USB port?
Thanks for any advice, At

 

[unshift]

yup - should be fine for linux you will have to do lots of customization to reduce the size of the install and to make it speedy, sounds more like an ideal candidate for netbsd

but to be honest unless you a short of cash and need it, i would bin it - too much time and effort iMHO - to get it up and running on that spec - but then again i am getting lazy in my old age

 

[Gas'd Off]

Ta

 

[turbine_2]

Um, if 95 will go on it then 98 should too, it's not that much bigger.

 

[Gas'd Off]

That's what I thought. But on trying to install I get a message saying 'not enough conventional memory'? The HDD has around 1.2GB free and it has 32MB ram. Conventional memory is the RAM yes? I thought 32MB should be enough to run w98 setup from DOS? Tried to install from DOS but got a message saying 'need to increase maximum application run space' (or similar?). I have looked up the w98 install requirements and it reckons it will run on a system with as little as 16MB ram.
Any advice appreciated

 

[unshift]

for win98 min spec is a 486 and 16mb ram so you are fine,

- in your config.sys file are you loading up himem.sys ?

 

[unshift]

alternatively create a win98 startup disc and install that way

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187632/EN-US/

if i am not mistaken some tecra's needed a bios update to resolve some issues for win98 - worth checking/getting the latest version

 

[turbine_2]

Oooh, conventional memory, that brings me back....

Conventional memory is the first 640kb (yes, k, not Mb or Gb) of memory that is used and is, as unshift says, dealt with in himem.sys files. Hopefully the 98 disk should be self booting but if not then you'll need a boot disk that has both himem.sys and the CD rom drivers on it. Otherwise, you could take the hard drive out, format it on another machine and copy the files from the CD onto the hard drive then boot from that but that starts to get a bit technical.

 

[Gas'd Off]

I thought maybe I'd start a fresh by using Darick's Boot & Nuke. Will that help bypass the 'not enough conventional memory' problem? Can I just create a w98 boot floppy on my PC then use it to boot up the blank LT?