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Linux distro for an ancient Pentium PC
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Are you sure it's not a 686? Because apparently the Pentium Pro from 1995 is already a 686, by 2001 the Pentium 4 was already out.
Ya, that's exactly my thought. I had Penitum 1 and Pentium 3/4 during those years. Pretty sure they are 686 and beyond.
Yes I am sure it's not 686. 686 distros don't boot anyways
I'm still skeptical. At the time of the original Pentium (the last 586 from Intel, the fastest of which was 300 MHz), the usual amount of RAM was something like 16 or 32 MB. A 586 with 1 GB of RAM is extremely weird and probably impossible unless it's some sort of high-end server. This does not check out.
Oh and DDR is also from around the time of the Pentium 4. I don't think there exists a machine that has both DDR and an original Pentium (aka 586). Again, this does not check out and is probably impossible.
There could be another reason it won't boot.
Yeah, I'm with you. 2001 and DDR... there's something else going on with the failure to boot. I don't think the Pentium 3 ever supported DDR, so this is probably a Pentium 4. If truly a model released in 2001, it would be Willamette, but that required RDRAM. DDR support was introduced with Northwood in 2002. On the other hand, it could be the P4 that was new in 2004, Prescott, and the 2001 statement comes from the first year the P4 was released.
We really need to see info from the BIOS
exact CPU model, RAM speed, etc.
As others have pointed out, this is a pretty anachronistic build
i586 with DDR1 is just weird, so it's possible there's some really niche hardware and you may need an exotic kernel (or kernel options) to get anything to boot.
That said: have you just tried running a standard live or install CD from that time period? You could try booting a 2001 Slackware installer to see what happens.
Could even be Cryix or a VIA or something from back then. VIA lacked cmov and will not boot i686.