[Novalug] Re: Updating an ancient Vaio laptop

[Roger W. Broseus]

Stephan,

Try Puppy Linux. You Vaio sounds a lot like the old Compaq I had - it 
came loaded with Win98. Unbelievably, I was able to get it into dual 
boot mode - Win98 ('er, was it 2000?) plus SuSE 9.x.

I reformatted / partitioned the HD and the following bombed: Knoppix, 
Debian, later versions of SuSE, Ubuntu, KUbuntu and the small version of 
Ubuntu (name escapes me). Puppy was great. I had to fiddle a bit 
learning to install it but got it up and running and it booted quite 
quickly for such an old device. I believe I had to use a PCMCIA card for 
networking but can not recall - too long ago - but that was for the 
Compaq. Could not, of course, get the Winmodem to crank-up.

Good luck.

/roger
>    7. Updating an ancient Vaio laptop (Stephan Greene)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Message: 7 Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:44:04 -0500 From: "Stephan 
> Greene" <ks1g04 at gmail.com> Subject: [Novalug] Updating an ancient Vaio 
> laptop To: NOVALUG <novalug at calypso.tux.org> Message-ID: 
> <40adabb30801151844y3b691e19lae7d97131e034af8 at mail.gmail.com> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Back in '03 or so, I 
> picked up (from Billy Ball) a Sony Vaio 505TR laptop. 300 MHZ CPU, 
> 128MB ram, 5GB hard drive. So it was sort of current 8 years ago. I 
> also have the external floppy and wired and wireless network cards. I 
> don't have the Sony CD drive. The laptop has something that started 
> out as RH9 on it with a slightly newer kernel. My thought is to stop 
> using it as a doorstop candidate and put it back into use for a 
> portable ham station idea and light web surfing when I want something 
> bigger than my Nokia 800 but more portable than a desktop. It has a 
> great form factor for portability. Not quite Mac Air thin, but pretty 
> decent for it's time. I'm looking for suggestions on a suitable more 
> modern distro to put on it compatible with a slower CPU and minimal 
> RAM. I have the suspicion Ubutnu would be overkill. Also, the distro 
> needs to be loadable via floppy boot/network download, or possibly 
> Lubi or UNetbootin. (Unless someone has a Sony Vaio CD drive I can 
> borrow or knows a way to make it boot from a USB drive.) Another 
> option is ebay it and get something a bit bigger but more modern. Steve