It’s really hard to say without seeing pictures. 36-pin makes me want to say Centronics connector, which were used to connect to various peripherals, including CD-ROM players, but also a lot of other things. But Compaq also had a weird proprietary 36-pin ISA slot way back, that may simply be an external connection cable (although… you know, it wouldn’t make that much sense for it to go on the sound card).
Having a PATA-CF or PATA-SD adapter around can make things much simpler and usually faster – a modern slow SD card is ridiculously fast compared to a vintage PATA spinner.
The hard drive it came with had (as far as I can tell) the stock Windows for Workgroups 3.1 (not 3.11) installation
Is it a thing? I’m not old enough to have seen those systems’ releases, but I used them on retro-machines and I seem to recall that Windows 3.1 was the original non-networked “home” version, and Windows 3.11 for workgroups was its updated, network-enabled edition.
In any case, it’s surprising how small the Linux kernel can be made today if you know exactly what hardware you’ll need to support.
Yes! 3.1 for Workgroups was also a thing, it was released a few months before 3.11 and… well, yep, it was a thing. If you’re curious, WinWorld PC has a copy. I’m not sure if it’s okay to post it here. It was a pretty interesting system, history-wise: it had a networking stack but IIRC it didn’t support TCP/IP, for example.
This is awesome! It had been many years since I’ve tried to get Linux boring on an old Gateway Color book from my youth. I think my machine only has 4MB of memory, and I got rid of all those dreaded floppies a long time ago.
Similar to what I did on a Compaq Contura 4/25c about 15 years ago - I managed to get Slackware 3.9 with a standalone X session running Netscape in 8Mb RAM.
It’s nice how small you can get a decently featureful modern kernel build to still be. I made a build of 5.9.11 (when it was the latest) small enough to fit on a floppy that also had a bootloader. It had multiuser, block device support, NFS support, ISA support, and 3C509 support. I used it on a Pentium Overdrive system and loaded the rootfs over the network with the aforementioned 3C509 and NFS support. :)
I felt very nostalgic as I read this post. My first Linux installation was Debian on a Packard Bell 486SX 25mhz. I was in the 7th grade and my friend Colin and I downloaded the distro and installed it off of floppy disks. After logging in, we got to the shell prompt and we had no idea what to do. I eventually found CheapBytes and ordered a “Linux CD sampler” pack, that included Slackware, Redhat, Debian, and maybe FreeBSD. I installed RedHat 4.2 and was able to get XWindows running, but my windows modem would not work. I wasn’t able to afford a non-winmodem and I wasn’t able to enjoy Linux on the internet until many years later, when we had cable internet installed.
Probably a connector for a CD-ROM. Before there was IDE CD-ROM drives, there were a few proprietary interfaces, often offered by sound cards
Maybe, but the pre-IDE CD connectors I know of are either 40-pin (Mitsumi, Panasonic) or 34-pin (Sony), not 36. And the WaveBlaster header is 26 pins.
It’s really hard to say without seeing pictures. 36-pin makes me want to say Centronics connector, which were used to connect to various peripherals, including CD-ROM players, but also a lot of other things. But Compaq also had a weird proprietary 36-pin ISA slot way back, that may simply be an external connection cable (although… you know, it wouldn’t make that much sense for it to go on the sound card).
Having a PATA-CF or PATA-SD adapter around can make things much simpler and usually faster – a modern slow SD card is ridiculously fast compared to a vintage PATA spinner.
Is it a thing? I’m not old enough to have seen those systems’ releases, but I used them on retro-machines and I seem to recall that Windows 3.1 was the original non-networked “home” version, and Windows 3.11 for workgroups was its updated, network-enabled edition.
In any case, it’s surprising how small the Linux kernel can be made today if you know exactly what hardware you’ll need to support.
Yes! 3.1 for Workgroups was also a thing, it was released a few months before 3.11 and… well, yep, it was a thing. If you’re curious, WinWorld PC has a copy. I’m not sure if it’s okay to post it here. It was a pretty interesting system, history-wise: it had a networking stack but IIRC it didn’t support TCP/IP, for example.
This is awesome! It had been many years since I’ve tried to get Linux boring on an old Gateway Color book from my youth. I think my machine only has 4MB of memory, and I got rid of all those dreaded floppies a long time ago.
Similar to what I did on a Compaq Contura 4/25c about 15 years ago - I managed to get Slackware 3.9 with a standalone X session running Netscape in 8Mb RAM.
It’s nice how small you can get a decently featureful modern kernel build to still be. I made a build of 5.9.11 (when it was the latest) small enough to fit on a floppy that also had a bootloader. It had multiuser, block device support, NFS support, ISA support, and 3C509 support. I used it on a Pentium Overdrive system and loaded the rootfs over the network with the aforementioned 3C509 and NFS support. :)
I felt very nostalgic as I read this post. My first Linux installation was Debian on a Packard Bell 486SX 25mhz. I was in the 7th grade and my friend Colin and I downloaded the distro and installed it off of floppy disks. After logging in, we got to the shell prompt and we had no idea what to do. I eventually found CheapBytes and ordered a “Linux CD sampler” pack, that included Slackware, Redhat, Debian, and maybe FreeBSD. I installed RedHat 4.2 and was able to get XWindows running, but my windows modem would not work. I wasn’t able to afford a non-winmodem and I wasn’t able to enjoy Linux on the internet until many years later, when we had cable internet installed.