• Launched in 1998: The 380Z was a fine ThinkPad with a classic bulky and rectangular form factor. It had a 13.3" TFT display, 233MHz Pentium II, and 160 megs of RAM.
• Found on eBay: The author found a perfect-condition 380Z on eBay and wanted to use it for slow-paced coding with modern software.
• Evaluated OSs: Tried different contemporary operating systems like BSD and Linux but had an underwhelming experience except for NetBSD which gave a smooth ride.
• Upgrading HDD: Replaced the original HDD with a 16GB mSATA through a mSATA-to-PATA adapter. The BIOS-reported disk size is limited to 8GB, so a smaller root partition and separate /home partition were used.
• Connecting to network: No built-in network card, but has CardBus and USB slots. Worked with Edimax EW-7108PCg WiFi CardBus card and a generic USB-to-LAN adapter.
• Booting installer: Doesn't support USB boot, but has a CardBus disk boot option. Used a Compact Flash card with NetBSD installer.
• Installation: NetBSD has a lightweight text-mode installer that guides through various settings. Selected "custom installation" and included the X11 environment.
• Enabling framebuffer: Added vesa on; vesa 1024x768; commands to /boot.cfg to enable VESA console framebuffer.
• Saving RAM: Turned off bloatware by adding to /etc/rc.conf and commenting out consoles in /etc/ttys.
• WireGuard: Supported out of the box with no extra dependencies. A developer added config file examples to the man page.
• Setting locale: Set locale manually in /etc/profile or ~/.profile.
• The X server: The NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV GPU had a dedicated driver in NetBSD that worked out of the box.
• Window manager: Default is CTWM, replaced with EMWM which is lightweight. Wrote a simple X11 app to group dockapps.
• Terminal emulator: XTerm is good enough with some color and font adjustments.
• The shell: Comes with sh, csh, and ksh. Installed bash for more functionality.
• Browsing web: Dillo is a reasonable browser for the 380Z with limited support for JavaScript and modern CSS.
• Playing music: Properly supported the built-in soundcard with mpg123 as the viable player.
• Good for: Suitable for terminal-based tasks like SSH work, UNIX learning, low-level coding, developing apps, and more.
• Final thoughts: NetBSD is a lightweight, engineered system that is pleasant to use, boots on old machines, and is great for spare underpowered machines.
• Comments: Threads on HN and Lobste.rs.