Yep, the 386 laptop I put Slackware on I also used PLIP to network to my main computer at the time. It was actually very serviceable as a monochrome X terminal in that setup.
FWIW, I think historical is quite appropriate for this story.
@evanmcc I don’t understand your concern. What is the important distinction that a new tag would make? What other recent historical links would be better labeled retrocomputing?
If you manage to find a compatible network card, you might be able to load up a MS networking driver and get it to talk to a Samba server. I managed to do this in around 2004 or so, to make netbooted machines download Doom to a ramdisk.
If you wanted to run linux on this machine, it ought to be pretty simple to get an older version of Slackware or similar from around 2000 running on it. That would probably simplify getting it talking to the text-only web. I’ve run it on a monochrome laptop with similar specs.
My first computer that was my own was a 386SX-16 with 3(!) MB of RAM, so a bit less capable than this one. A lot of my early online days were on it with OS/2 (having upgraded the RAM to 9(!) MB), so I don’t know exactly what your best path forward for Win 3.1 network access is. Maybe you’ve already gotten Trumpet Winsock and Netscape Navigator working.
I do enjoy this sort of nostalgia. You might also want to check out this 386 rebuild, even includes some soldering orientated repairs/replacements, and gets quite detailed about the history of the hardware components: https://youtu.be/Yw8moAQ1wTA
I installed Debian from floppies on my 386 with 4MB RAM as my first Linux installed.
I thought I’d save a lot of time by not installing the documentation, turns out it was shortsighted.
I used a printer cable to “network” between that computer and another when it was time to migrate from it. PLIP for the win!
Yep, the 386 laptop I put Slackware on I also used PLIP to network to my main computer at the time. It was actually very serviceable as a monochrome X terminal in that setup.
can we get a retrocomputing tag? historical here is a real stretch.
Sorry :(. I did not see that tag in the list and
historicalwas the closest relevant thing I could find.FWIW, I think
historicalis quite appropriate for this story.@evanmcc I don’t understand your concern. What is the important distinction that a new tag would make? What other recent
historicallinks would be better labeledretrocomputing?If you manage to find a compatible network card, you might be able to load up a MS networking driver and get it to talk to a Samba server. I managed to do this in around 2004 or so, to make netbooted machines download Doom to a ramdisk.
If you wanted to run linux on this machine, it ought to be pretty simple to get an older version of Slackware or similar from around 2000 running on it. That would probably simplify getting it talking to the text-only web. I’ve run it on a monochrome laptop with similar specs.
My first computer that was my own was a 386SX-16 with 3(!) MB of RAM, so a bit less capable than this one. A lot of my early online days were on it with OS/2 (having upgraded the RAM to 9(!) MB), so I don’t know exactly what your best path forward for Win 3.1 network access is. Maybe you’ve already gotten Trumpet Winsock and Netscape Navigator working.
I do enjoy this sort of nostalgia. You might also want to check out this 386 rebuild, even includes some soldering orientated repairs/replacements, and gets quite detailed about the history of the hardware components: https://youtu.be/Yw8moAQ1wTA