Thinkpad 560e, built ca. 1997, obviously a pretty old machine. After updating the BIOS (see ./thinkpad-560e-bios-update.txt) I decided to try and put some Linux on it, so that I could use it for basic email, Internet radio, and such. The machine has no CD-ROM drive, no USB; only two PCMCIA slots and an external floppy. So, getting a Linux on it is not straightforward at all. There are a couple of floppy based distros (Basic Linux http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/, Tom's Linux http://www.toms.net/rb/, etc.) but those obviously don't get you too far -- but they work, no problem. Also, my 560e only has 38 MB RAM and a 2GB hard drive. And, to wrap it up, it has a Japanese keyboard!

How to get a proper Linux system onto the machine in the first place, given the lack of modern peripherals? Not too difficult, in fact, for the machine boots happily from PCMCIA (unlike more recent Thinkpads!). Beware though, you'll need a 16-bit card; the PCMCIA slot is not made for more modern 32-bit cards. (You'll get a PCMCI adapter plus a Compact Flash card at Amazon for reasonable prices at around 15 EUR for both; I went for a 4GB one.)

Use unetbootin on another machine to chuck the distro ISO on the card. Not every unetbootin version will work, though; some insist on USB drives to install a Linux image onto. A 471-2 version on Debian Squeeze worked for me -- it allows you to install an ISO image onto any device/partition of your choice. (The partition has to be FAT formatted and be mounted.)

Now, most current Linux distros don't boot well on that little 560e, of course. Not Antix, not Puppy, not even Tiny Core (as of 4.0.1, when I last tried). And if they do, they don't support PCMCIA, or don't even find the hard disk (or require messing with boot parameters for hours, which I didn't want to do). Predictably, most fail to boot up neatly due to the lack of RAM -- most distros need 128 MB, or at least 64 MB. And I couldn't be asked to buy vintage RAM to get me beyond 64 MB; they are /ridiculously/ expensive.

The one distro that ultimately turned out to work was slackware-mini-install.iso at version 12.0 (http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/slackboot/mini/). What you'll want to do is put that on the CF drive (using unetbootin), plus add the a, ap, l, n directories from Slackware 12.0 somewhere on the drive, too (doesn't matter where).

Next, go for the actual installation of Slackware on the machine, using standard Slackware tools. At least install the Linux kernel (which ended up on the CF drive by virtue of the unetbootin step) plus a choice of apps/libraries (from the directories you put there on top); plus bootloader, plus adding a user for yourself, etc. That is pretty much it.

For good measure, I bought a vintage PCMCIA Ethernet card on eBay (again, needs to be 16-bit!) that then worked right out of the box. Also got APM to work (adding /sbin/modprobe apm to some file somewhere in /etc/rc.d/, don't remember where; cf. also http://www.math.osu.edu/~easwaran/tech/t23_linux.html); got sound to work (alsaconf as root, go for the legacy section; snd_es1688 is the module that it went for in my case; turn up the volume with alsamixer, then save settings with 'alsactl store'); GPM worked pretty much out of the box.

As for console based Internet radio enjoyment, I installed moc and threw in SOL FM (http://str15.streamakaci.com:9490) and WWOZ (http://wwoz-sc.streamguys.com:80/wwoz-lo.mp3) (CTRL-U to add a new URL, V to save a playlist). As for email, mutt and IMAP have to do to get to Gmail; lynx and links for basic web browsing.

su -c 'apm -s' gets the machine to sleep; I may some day also check the instructions at http://www.math.osu.edu/~easwaran/tech/t23_linux.html and try to get hibernation to work to; but for now: enough is enough.