[plug] Linux on an IBM PS/2

[John Summerfield]

> I was wondering if anyone has any experience installing linux (of any flavor)
>  on a 486 IBM PS/2 box? 
> 
> A guy I work with is wanting to do that.  His little homework project is a pr
> ecursor to our company distributing a lot of our stuff on more modern hardwar
> e, with linux! :), he's just trying to use what he's got. 
> 
> His other problem is connecting his home PS/2 box to his windows box which ha
> s the only available cdrom for the install.  I've heard that 'PLIP', a parall
> el port connection sw might do it.  (he does not have the two boxes networked
>  right now)

PS/2 boxes are really easy to open; I saw a demo when they were first 
released. You open the box, and inside there's a tool that you use to take 
the rest of it apart. I don't recall about screws and disk drives 
though;-).

Borrowing the CD drive may be the simplest option (warning: the PS/2 may 
be all SCSI).
 
> He's only got 8M ram on the PS/2, so an older version of linux might be neede
> d.

I recent version should be okay, but forget gnome and KDE. XFree won't be 
very inspiring either.
> 
> I've searched the web.  But I've heard that the PS/2 might be an MCA architec
> ture instead of ISA, which complicates. (admitting: I'd never heard of 'MCA' 
> before this...)

MCA is microchannel architecture. It IS supported now. It's a big 
improvement on ISA, but expensive.

> 
> Appreciate any advice on recycling this old hardware and proving that linux c
> an be forgiving of old systems.  

I was going to offer the use of my Red hat 4.2 CD (or a copy), but then I 
remembered;0). Your time zone suggests you're a little bit further away 
than Freo.

I've used RHL from this in 8 Mbytes.

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.