The ThinkPad arrived pretty dusty and a bit worn out. You could tell right away that it had seen quite a few years of use. Before even thinking about Linux or anything else, it definitely needed a proper cleaning session first.
IBM Thinkpad T42
With a fresh CMOS battery and new thermal paste, most of it ran surprisingly well again. I also gave the keyboard and case a thorough cleaning – after that, the T42 already looked way better.
The first thing I did was install Arch Linux, just to try things out and see how stable everything runs. For a machine from 2004, it actually holds up surprisingly well. :)
Right now I’m working on getting Gentoo running on the T42. Since the Pentium M doesn’t exactly have much power, I’m compiling the packages on my other ThinkPad (E14 Gen 5 AMD) and then transferring them over. That saves a lot of time – otherwise the little T42 would probably be compiling for days.
The PC on the left is currently compiling the kernel, and after that all the packages as binaries, so I can transfer them over to the T42.
The machine on the right (the T42 itself) is busy updating the @world set — which is taking quite a while since I went with the x86 desktop profile. It’s already been compiling for a full day, so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly. With a bit of luck, I’ll have a working desktop up and running in the next few days.
Well… here we go.
Pro tip: don’t pick the desktop profile unless you actually want your T42 to spend a week straight compiling.
The kernel I built isn’t booting yet (pray for me), but at least I’ve got all the precompiled software sitting on my other ThinkPad—if that one decides to cooperate.
Still a work in progress… but hey, progress is progress.