I've rolled one for my AST PowerExec 4/25SL - 8 MiB of RAM, 25Mhz
486SL.
I quite liked the process, though it took "a while" (IIRC some six months on and (mostly) off) - and I dont think its 100% even now.
The base was a buildroot built uClibc+busybox based userspace and a custom kernel. Then i just built everything I needed for the system around that - mostly in a chroot on my Sempron. I enforced the host build and target triplets to the correct i486-linux-uclibc and had -mcpu=i486 in CFLAGS, seems to work well enough.
The system is also capable of building stuff on its own, it just takes some time. I built GRUB 1.95 - some old dev version of GRUB 2 for it on it, and actually patched it (on it) to be able to boot from the 1GiB CF i have as a hard disk (the BIOS has some issues with the CF because it wont allow to read more than 4 sectors as a single request... Attempt to read a full "track" and it will freeze).
HW specs:
- CPU: 25Mhz 80486SL
- RAM: 8MiB
- HDD: 1 GiB SanDisk CF
- VGA: WD90C26L - 512KiB of VRAM - it can drive 800x600 256-colors on the VGA out
- LCD: 640x480 256-color active-matrix
- Network: PCMCIA 3Com 3C562 10Mbps Ethernet+33.6k Modem combo (i only use ethernet, obviously)
Well... what do i have now SW wise:
- Modified Linux 2.4.36.7 kernel
- XFree 3.3.6
- Fluxbox
- Dillo
- Links (text,X,svgalib)
- ssh client
- proftpd
- conky
- The Ace Of Penguins, aka minesweeper, taipei, etc...
- tmsnc (used to work, fuck M$...)
- emelFM
- SciTE
- Beaver
- GCC 3.3.6 - C compiler only (original compiler)
- GCC 4.1.2 - C and C++ compilers
- zgv
- xzgv
...
A package manager would have been nice since I dont remember everything I have on this anymore.
Just so you know who to ask if you want tips on how to make your 486 into an useless geek toy.
