Got my hands on a Dell Latitude ON module. Turns out it’s nothing more than a 2 GB flash module that fits in a mPCIe slot and is wired to the USB lanes. Shows up as /dev/sdb.
I do have a couple of old laptops that don’t have a secondary SATA drive slot, but do have open mPCIe slots with USB lanes (no mSATA lanes). The Latitude ON module would allow for a dual drive system, albeit a rather crappy one. What would you put on a secondary internal drive if it were limited to 2 GB and USB protocol?
I imagine it was put into your device as a recovery drive. So maybe Ventoy & a lightweight ISO of your favorite distribution?
This reminded me of my old friend DSL, had to check up on it. Didn’t realize they re-released it!
https://damnsmalllinux.org/
No longer at the 50MB size, but still 700MB would be great for a small OS on this odd piece of older hardware.
There is Tiny Core Linux if you want something small like the original DSL.
It’s 2025, the EFF and certbot exists, but no https? Interesting.
Any who, thanks. I’ll check it out, but I’m a little bit turned off by the above.
I didn’t see any way if posting data, so I guess there’s not really a reason for them to use ssl. Their forum is using ssl at least.
Oh DSL, I remember asking other kids in middle school how they knew Angelina Jolie had Damn Small Linux as an OS. Learned a lot that day.
Woah, core memory unlocked! As kids, we put DSL on business card shaped DVDRWs and kept them in our wallets. We could take them to the library and boot into DSL, bypassing the software security.
At the time, libraries had outrageously fast internet compared to home. I would plug in my ORB drive and write as much Napster to the tape drive as I could (2.2GB @ 5-8MB/second). I’m sure everyone there had the worst connections because of me.
Great memory for me, thanks! 🙏