Posts by i686-linux

No reason to be ashamed of old hardware! As long as it posts, it's a usable machine! I too have one of the old Toshiba laptops that was given to me as a freebie, and I absolutely love it. PI-120mhz, 32mb RAM, and 2.0gb HD. Anyways... It is possible to obtain Windows 95 (and possibly 98, though not positive) on a set of floppy disks. This is not the most popular way to install Windows 95 as it requires something along the lines of 20 or more floppies. (I honestly don't remember the exact number, as it has been years since I have seen a set of these.) If you are unable to find a set of these disks, then it is possible to install a number of other operating systems via FTP/NFS. I am not sure what your background is, or how familiar you are with other operating systems, but post if you are interested and I can reply with a few suggestions.

This may not be of great help, but those modem + sound-in-one combo cards seem to be nothing but a pain. Sometimes even when used in Windows with the manufacturer's drivers. Which card is this in particular?

The forums are meant to be used for sharing ideas and helping people out. By starting holy-wars about "Which operating system is cooler" you are shying people away in search of valuable information. Microsoft serves it's purpose in the world just as Linux or any other operating system does. Please refrain from continuing to flame on about this topic in this forum. Such conversations may be held in the Geek Lounge or in personal messages.

If you purchase the Linksys product that I mentioned, it will fully replace your current DSL modem.

I have not seen a product that accepts a USB instead of RJ45 modem, but Linksys does offer a product that is the ADSL modem, router, wireless access point, and 4-port ethernet switch all in one. I have not personally used this product but would recommend a Linksys product any day. Here is the link:

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=35&prid=590

Hope it is close enough to what you are looking for.

I don't have much Mandrake experience, but you may want to upgrade your kernel to 2.4.25. Many issues have been fixed since the 2.4.22 release ranging from driver issues, to exploit fixes. I myself have had issues compiling kernel drivers, and an update to 2.4.25 took care of my build issues. (I was previously using 2.4.22 also, but for slackware) Compiling a kernel can be a bit troublesome the first time, but lots of help and documentation is available for this. Doesn't mandrake even provide an update tool for this?

As a side note, I highly recommend that anyone running a kernel prior to 2.4.25 upgrade soon!