lfs machine?

[emetib]

a friend of mine gave me an old ibm ps/valuepoint 425sx box.

i486sx processor
255.9 hard drive
intel etherexpress 16tp nic card

these are the only things that i can see as i open up the box.

q- i'm looking at installing a linux from scratch system to learn and then set it up as a router/firewall. does this system have the abilities to do this? i can't see how much ram it has. (probably 8mb from the searching that i've done)

i've conected it with my other machine with a crossover cable, but am not sure how to go about looking at it. will i have to enable sharing through a proxy? do i have to install the driver for the nic card on my standard box to see it? i don't have a switch to have both boxes running on my monitor yet (have to find a gender adapter).

any opinions would be great. if you need to know what i have now-

amd 1600+
dual boot:lilo; mdk 9.0 (default), win2k
2 @ 20 gig hd's
burner
dvd rom

[2damncommon]

I would guess you do NOT want to attempt LFS on that PC. For one, LFS takes one running Linux system to build the LFS version; the hard drive space is a big issue here. And two, I doubt you will enjoy the time it takes to compile on a 486 with low RAM, even if it WILL compile.
A more sensible approach may be to find a specialized distro for router/firewall.
Or start with basics running text mode. Get online and surf with Lynx or Links, check your email with Pine or Mutt, read news with Pine or Tin - get SSH, and NFS working between the Linux boxes....
A minimal install (Debian, Slack, Vector....) with no Xwindows and add anything else you need.