I didn't try RedHat at all, because I only have a 260 MB drive - maybe a minimal RedHat 4/5 install might fit. Instead, I went with Peanut Linux 9.1 (it's supposed to be ~240 MB for the full install). It requires a lot of patience and the right equipment to get it going - but it can be done. Here's my recipe:
1. The easiest approach involves using an IDE-to-PCMCIA adapter board - this allows you to plug in the PCMCIA hard drive from the Stylistic 1000 into the board, which is then plugged into a desktop (host) machine; the PCMCIA hard drive then shows up as an additional IDE drive to the BIOS, DOS, etc. on the host. I used a Sandisk SD35B-32 3.5" IDE Flash drive module from Surplus Computers as the IDE-to-PCMCIA adapter - this contains a PCMCIA slot and a PCMCIA flash card which I removed and replaced with the Integral 260 MB PCMCIA hard drive.
2. You need a host running DOS and at least 120MB free on the DOS partition (it probably helps to have a lot more). The host can be any x86, but it helps to use a 486 or Pentium to avoid confusing the Peanut installer on the host. Download peanut.bz2 and peanut.zip to a directory (say \peanut) in DOS and unzip peanut.zip.
3. Boot into DOS on the host and run ram.bat from this directory - it uses loadlin to start a ramdisk-based minimal linux, which contains the Peanut installer (setup) and a few utilities (fdisk, ...). The PCMCIA hard drive must be visible to this linux instance (say as /dev/hdd) or this method won't work. Check the output of dmesg to ensure that it recognizes the PCMCIA hard drive.
4. Run fdisk and partition the PCMCIA hard drive into two partitions - /dev/hdd1 for the root filesystem, and /dev/hdd2 for swap. For the 260 MB Integral 8260 with geometry 936c/16h/34s, I set it up with cylinders 1-908 for /dev/hdd1 and 909-936 for swap (~7.6 MB). This is critical, or else you will either run out of space during the install, or the swap will be too small.
5. Run setup and use ext2 for the root filesystem - answer all the prompts and wait until it completes the installation. It will use almost *all* the space in /dev/hdd1.
6. Mount the new root filesystem somewhere on the ramdisk tree (say /mnt/root), chroot /mnt/root and create a file /etc/lilo.conf with the following entries:
# Begin lilo.conf
boot=/dev/hdd
disk=/dev/hdd
bios = 0x80
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
linear # you may have to experiment with lba32 if this doesn't work
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda1
#End lilo.conf
7. Run /sbin/lilo and see that there are no errors or warnings.
8. Edit /etc/fstab and ensure that the dev entries for / and swap are set to the target machine devices - these should be /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2, *not* /dev/hdd1 and /dev/hdd2.
9. Create space on / (I deleted /usr/local/Realplayer8 and /usr/local/netscape and released over 20 MB). Unless you do this step, you'll run into difficulties during the first boot on the Stylistic 1000 (target), because it's a very tight squeeze on the root filesystem.
10. Power down the host, remove the PCMCIA hard drive and plug it into the Stylistic 1000 (target). Plug a PS/2 keyboard into the Stylistic 1000 and power up. If all went well, it should boot into LILO and subsequently into Linux. Login as root, and run 'setup' to continue configuration.
There's a lot more to be done to configure XFree86, get the pen driver installed, etc., but this is the outline of the base OS installation.
