Tiny Core Base > TCB Talk

TinyCore on old 486 with ISA only, no PCI

<< < (2/2)

curaga:
As far as I know there is no complete utility that would transform your hardware data to a kernel .config file. There have been some attempts, but they usually generate configs with things missing or something unwanted.

softwaregurl:
FYI based on my own experience.  On board  video cards typically use system RAM.  So subtract memory used for video.  Linux is going to want a math co-processor  so  486DX will work but 486SX will not.
edit:I have also seen (but would have to find again) back ports projects to even 286 and other pre-linux hardware.

fratzicu:
Hi, I have tried to load TinyCore on the old system 486 with 24 meg ram; I have selected the tinycore base; the errors were:

ACPI: Unable to load the System Description Tables
PCI: Fatal: No config space access function found
Kernel panic - not syncing: Out of memory and no killable processes...

I don't know what those errors mean. I guess it's about the fact that my PC has no ACPI and no PCI.

curaga:
Not having ACPI and PCI is not the problem, it's the fact you don't have enough RAM to boot (32mb). You would need to use a lighter system to install TC to the hard drive in order to use it on such low ram.

fratzicu:
Hi, I have succeeded installing TinyCore on the 486 with 16 meg ram. I have installed it on a partition of the HDD. It rund pretty slow, but it runs. Far faster than DSL. Now, the problem is that it doesn't detect my ISA network card, a SMC 8140.

Here is a little tutorial (how I did it):
1) get a tomsrtbt on a floppy. to do this, you need to download it here http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery/tomsrtbt-2.0.103.tar.gz for linux and here http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery/tomsrtbt-2.0.103.dos.zip for dos. Make sure you use a good floppy
2) use a partitioning tool to create a linux ext2 partition
3) I have win 95 on a partition, and anodher fat32 partition; the windows has a network card so I got the tinycore.gz on a fat32 partition
4) I used tomsrtbt to start pc and mounted the ext2 and fat partitions
5) gunzipped and copied the file tinycore.gz and bzImage to the / of the ext2 partition;
gunzip tinycore.gz
cp /mnt/dos/tinycore.gz /mnt/ext2fs (just an example)
cp /mnt/dos/bzImage /mnt/ext2fs
cd /mnt/ext2fs
cpio -d -i<tinycore (here i added the -d command, to create needed directories)
6) created /boot/grub folder where i have put the file menu.lst with
title Tinycore
root (hd0,4)
kernel /bzImage root=/dev/hda5 (my case)
boot
7) created a grub boot floppy on anodher linux system as described here http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622
8) rebooted with the grub boot, and at the grub prompt i have issued the exact commands as in menu.lst and booted tinycore
9) mounted fd0 under /mnt/fd0
10) copied the files from floppy (stage*) to the /boot/grub/ and chmodded 777 -R /boot/grub/
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0
cp /mnt/fd0/boot/grub/stage* /boot/grub/
11) rebooted with the grub boot floppy and at the grub prompt gave the commmands from menu.lst without the last "boot" command
12) gave then setup (hd0,4) in my case which installed grub on the first sector of the tinycore partition
13) installed GAG boot manager (I like this one)
14) rebooted and everything worked fine
Now I have to find a way to com[ile support for my network card
But I'll take a break for now
I couldn't install it on an old laptop IBM thinkpad 755CD. It gave segfault when tried to start x server. It has 24 mb ram. I don't know what is the problem.

That's it

5)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page