Sunday, September 14th, 2014

	Un-unix-able computer
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not much into PC-compatibles and I never was, but when I see
an interesting machine, platform really doesn't matter. That's why
I've got this tiny desktop called Bcom WinNET III.

It's quite a nice compact PC, with form factor similar to Macintosh
LC, just even smaller. Based on 233MHz system-on-chip Cyrix MediaGX
(later known as AMD Geode), it has graphics and sound integrated on
a single piece of silicon. There are two PC-100 SDRAM slots (one
DIMM and one SO-DIMM), two USB ports and 100mbit ethernet. Although 
not a supercomputer by today's standards, I imagine it could still
serve at least as a headless network radio player, when equipped
with proper operating system.

And that's where my problem is. Probably because it's no mainstream
PC-clone, but rather a thin client, which has Intel-compatible CPU
as a coincidence, I didn't have any luck booting unix-like systems.
Both OpenBSD and NetBSD hang during the boot process and I don't 
know why. Most of generic Linux distributions require i686, while
MediaGX is a i586 clone. There are some distros targeted at old
computer, but they are just weird and I have no intention to try 
them. What I'm gonna try for sure is Debian, before the systemd 
disease arrives. And if even Debian fails, then it is sure, that
this machine is un-unix-able.