Re: Unix/Linux Box

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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In article <ce9c44dd.0308191720.d47df4a@posting.google.com>,
Ralph Glatt <julian814@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Okay, gents, I just can't wait for Contiki to come out for the //c. I
>want to put together a Unix/Linux box I can use as a go-between so I
>can get software for my //c off the internet. I've talked to some of
>my geek friends at school, and they're willing to help. I also thought
>I might ask here, since I'm sure a lot of you have already done
>something like this. Any recommendations? I have (I think) a 486 that
>runs at 100 MHz, and has two ~500 Meg hard drives. I know I'm going to
>need a modem to get the 486 on the internet, any idea where I might
>get one cheap?

What modem are you using right now?  That'd be a start.  If it's something
old and slow (like a 2400), you should be able to score an external or ISA
internal 56K modem off of eBay or something for not much.

Come to think of it, last time I was at Computer Surplus Outlet, they had a
box full of US Robotics/3Com internal modems...with the jumpers that were on
them, I'm reasonably sure they're not winmodems.  Those should be fairly
cheap, and they're among the better modems that were made.

As for software...if you're thinking of running Linux on your old 486,
you'll want one of the more lightweight distros.  Red Hat and its ilk are
right out...they'll crawl, and they'll usually install far more stuff than
you want on a router.  There are some floppy-based distros, but getting them
set up right can be tricky.  Slackware is a HD-installable distro that's
been around forever and runs decently on modest hardware...at work, I have
Slackware 8 running on a 486DX2-66 with 16 megs of RAM; it's set up as a
print server and has done fairly well at that...it's not bad at all,
considering that it was thrown together from junkbox parts (total cost: $0).

  _/_   Scott Alfter
 / v \  salfter@salfter.dyndns.org
(IIGS(  http://alfter.us            Top-posting!
 \_^_/  pkill -9 /bin/laden         >What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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