[mythtv-users] OT: Old Linux (was MythTV : Thank You)

[Scott Alfter]

Tom Lichti wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
>> On Feb 5, 2007, at 10:03 AM, Tom Lichti wrote:
>>
>>> Chris Pinkham wrote:
>>>> If you want a really old distro, check out the wikipedia page for SLS
>>>> and an archive of SLS v1.03, circa the fall of 1992.
>>> I can one up you on that, I started on Yggdrasil Linux, sometime in
>>> 91-92. :P
>> I was going to mention that one but I couldn't remember how to spell  
>> it :-)
>>
>> Now, what CPU were you running. I seem to recall upgrading from a 486  
>> to a Pentium-I in 1993 (and getting one of the originals with the  
>> FDIV bug). I had to fill out some sort of form for Intel stating that  
>> I actually had a need to do floating point division in order to get  
>> the replacement. Pretty stupid huh? Like having to prove a need to  
>> type an "F" in order to get a bad keyboard replaced.
> 
> Most likely a Cyrix 486 class proc. Couldn't afford a Pentium. :) I 
> recall RAM was about $100 a MB at the time...

Luxury!  My first Linux box was a 25-MHz 386SX with 4 MB of RAM, a 120-MB hard
drive, and a 256K VGA card driving a monochrome monitor.  I think I might still
have a copy of SLS on 5.25" floppies somewhere.

The monitor was a fixed-frequency job that was only supposed to do 640x480, but
I used a slight adjustment to the vertical-hold knob and a custom modeline to
run X11 at 800x600 with a 50-Hz refresh rate.  (I know I had it working at 1
bpp; I don't recall if I got 4 bpp grayscale working.)  The persistence of the
phosphors used in monochrome monitors was usually a fair bit longer than that
of the phosphors in color monitors, so you could get away with such a low
refresh rate without eyestrain.

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