OS for older systems

[Tom Buskey]

Anyone have recent experience with linux/*BSD on older, smaller systems?

I have an old 386 16MHz/8MB ram [maxed out!]/100MB disk system
(toshiba 5200/100) that I'm trying to get going.  I have DOS running
just fine.  I don't care about graphics.

It's a luggable (no battery).  Flip up plasma screen, 1 16bit ISA card
(w/ Adaptec 1542 SCSI) and 1 8bit ISA (wd8003 NIC).  I have a SCSI CD
on it and could put a drive on it, but I want to fit everything into
the 100MB drive.

Toshiba once offered these to developers w/ Toshiba Unix (probably
Interactive Unix) for a discounted price of $10,000 around '90.  Back
then, this was a pretty good deal.  Commercial Unix w/ developer tools
ran $1000-$2000 and linux wasn't written yet.  Some people got minix
modified to '386 enough to run emacs/gcc etc but it wasn't the same as
real Unix.  I'm not sure BSDi or the free BSDs existed yet either.

I got mine out of the scrap heap for free.  It's interesting to me as
history and what drove Linus to create Linux.  I imagine it's similar
in power to the '386 he started with though it may have more RAM.