Comments on: Five generations of junk http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/ K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:19:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47972 Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:56:35 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47972 My pleasure! That sounds like a fantastic machine — I’m a bit jealous! Send an update every now and then! ;)

]]> By: darkduck http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47961 Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:33:13 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47961 Why do you need same version of Linux on all of them? I would install different versions. That way you can have more reasons to complain, if this is your aim. 8-)

]]> By: totalizator http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47960 Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:17:59 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/five-generations-of-junk/#comment-47960 I’ve been looking around for a 486 machine for months and finally I’ve found one on an internet auction. It’s an exotic machine labeled as “Olivetti Echos 48 color plus” laptop. The specs are: 486 DX4 100MHz processor, 16MB RAM, 540MB HD, 3,5″ FDD, 2xPCMCIA slots, active color display, it’s pink (well, sort of), has German (QWERTZ) keyboard layout and has been manufactured in 1994. As if it weren’t enough the Olivetti is an Italian company but the laptop is assembled in Korea. Absolutely incredible ;) . Oh and the original price in 1994 was $4038 USD. Here is an article I’ve found, introducing Echos 44 model (same look, older processor and smaller HD): http://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc144?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true&pageNumber=206 (unfortunately it’s in Italian!).

So far, I’ve been able to get rid of Windows 98 which previous owner put inside (quite operational) and install a Debian Woody (3.0). Everything thanks to a six (sic!) magic floppy installer images from Debian archive (archive.debian.org) and a Xircom RealPort PCMCIA LAN card. The installation was unbelievably straight forward and the only inconvenience was changing the default apt sources (adding archive.* prefix to it). I’ve ended up with a ready to go ~100MB Debian install which after boot and logging in shows that the RAM usage is mere 3MB, swap usage 0MB (fully connected to the Internet).

Lately I’ve even done dist-upgrade to Debian Sarge (3.1) and I think I’ll stick with that for longer as everything works just right. The machine is perfect for a dumb terminal as the only spinning thing is a hard disk and the power supply is labeled as 1,5A@21W max output. I’ve been able to run X on it with IceWM but despite using only 7MB RAM and ~20MB for SWAP it is too slow for comfortable use.

Still, I think that it’s a great machine for which I can find many useful tasks on a daily basis (I’m not kidding). It’s unbelievably small – maybe a bit thicker than a modern netbook and proves how bloated modern laptops have become. It’s a great experience and a big lesson messing with hardware that old. Thanks for inspiration K.Mandla!

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