I have an opportunity to acquire some Internet PC's that were made by a defunct company called GlobalPC. These machines at present are configured to run Geos. But I would like to run an operating system that is not extinct. I have played with tiny versions of Linux and I have had some limited success. These machines can run DOS too. But if I have to pay big money to update every machine its not going to be profitable or worth the trouble. They are based on an AMD Elan SC410-100AC processor with just under 8M of EDO DRAM. The small footprint is one of the biggest challenges. They have an ALI M5042 and M5113 chipset. They also have one 1.4M floppy and a 4.3G hardisk. The VGA chip is an IGS Technologies CyberPro 2010 that supports SVGA and NTSC composite video. They have a PS/2 interface mouse and keyboard. They are also configured with a Yamaha YMF715-ES sound chip and a Conexant R6764-63 modem. I would really like to see if I could get Linux running on this machine. Hardware upgrade on these machines are impractical.

If I can get a tiny version of Linux to run on these, I would like to make some install diskettes that reformat the hard drive and install it all on there from this stack of diskettes. Once I get a basic Linux and X system working, I would like to put a bunch of stuff on a website to download for free. There are about 12K of these PC's left.

If anybody can help me with this, I would appreciate it. I could pay a little but, but this has to be done cheap. I will send you one of these machines for free too.

rudy@rocktechnology.com


Rudy

Hi Rudy,

You did not mention that the machines have a cdrom drive attached, so I will assume that they do not. Same for ethernet?

Are the hard drives IDE? How big is the power supply? I ask this to investigate if one could attach a CDROM drive (or writer) during development.

Most importantly though, you want to run Linux. Okay, but what?
Meaning, what is the use for the machine? If you are looking at building a web browser, that is probably doable without much trouble. But if you are looking to do more, you will have to be a bit more specific.

Some things to remember, graphics interfaces can consume from 100K to 1M or more, so careful thought as to the graphics support needed is required. Also, the choice of graphics system will influence which applications may be run.

It might be fun to put linux up on one of these boxes. It would be super if there is network capability and the machines could be configured to remote boot.

Let me know what you want/think, OKAY?

Bill