Found this year old HowTo wrt installing Gentoo on a 486 system https://github.com/yeokm1/gentoo-on-486/ Might be handy for some. There's plenty of ftp servers out there with older versions.

Slackware is also an option for i586 kernal ftp://ftp.swin.edu.au/slackware/slackware-14.2/README.TXT

Fallaxia wrote:

Excellent question!

I use VMware on my workstation to do this, here is how:

Ah, OK. I figured it might be something like that. I have compiled new Gentoo builds in a portage / chroot jail several times. Similar concept, but w/o VMware.

Caluser2000 wrote:

There's plenty of ftp servers out there with older versions.

Older kernels and Live CDs, or older software repos? I probably have ancient ISOs or burned discs around here somewhere, but I won't be able to build a new circa-2005 Gentoo box from stage3 without a mirror of the distfiles from back then. That's what I would really like to find.

For 2005 era Gentoo look for the following ISOs install-x86-universal-2005.0.iso & packages-x86-2005.0.iso

Slackware ISOs https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/slackware/pub/s … /slackware-iso/

I like *.deb based more because I'm familiar with them than anything else and collect old Linux box sets if I can can find them. With care you can mix and match repos other *.deb distos. Run a highly modified Xandro 2.5 Business Edition on my old P200MMX box as it had far better usb support compared to other distros at the time and integrates nicely in my home network.

I have found these 486 HOT Shuttle boards to not be the most reliable. It is a long shot, but could you try using Gento with 64 MB (32x2) FPM, 256K double-banked, and the POD in WT mode? Yes, I realise you mentioned on more than one occasion that the system works fine in Windows OSes, but sometimes illogical things happen with old hardware.

EDIT: I should point out that back in around 2011 I tried what you are describing on my 486 with 256 MB of RAM. I tested about a half dozen distros and found DamnSmallLinux to be the easiest and fastest to get going.