[wplug] setting up an old laptop

[Keir Josephson]

On Jan 16, 2004, at 6:58 PM, Ben Beige wrote:

> I just got my hands on a old IBM thinkpad 701c it's a 486 w/ 16mb of 
> ram, I was wondering what would be the best way to get Linux onto it 
> and how to connect it to my home network or another Linux box as a 
> terminal. as far as I can tell it doesn't have a serial port, it dose 
> have IR and parallel thought the parallel port is also the floppy 
> connector form the looks of it. it dose have a Cirrus Logic PCIC 
> compatible PCMCIA controller too (according to windows 95)  
> http://mdxi.collapsar.net/butterfly/tp701-specsheet.png  according to 
> this sheet it its 2 type 1 2 type 2 or 1 type 3 capable for PCMCIA if 
> anyone has a spare NIC i could get :) but I'd like recomendations on 
> how to get linuc onto this system and how to connect it to my home 
> network
>
>

Just off hand, I'd see if you can get ahold of a parallel cdrom. 
That'll probably be the easiest way to get the OS on. If not, you could 
put together a boot floppy with nic support (I'm assuming from your 
statement, above, that you have a parallel floppy drive.). Boot with a 
standard pcmcia nic card and complete your install over the network.

Otherwise, your best bet is to get the IR port up and running so you 
can do a network install over the IR network. I don't no if it's 
possible, but I suppose, in theory, you could set up a floppy to 
support the IR port. You could create a standard boot floppy then 
replace the default kernel & boot image with ones that were recompiled 
to support all available IR devices. I realize that there are probably 
a lot of holes in this one and may require more in-depth configuration, 
but it's worth a shot.

-Keir