Hello.
I didn't notice you got a '386 CPU but one of my machines is as "old" as i can personally tolerate already and it's actually compatible with "i586" (32 bits) flavours of Linux, in my case for an Acer LapTop having only USB2... These days i tend to avoid anything this much "legacy", one hard lesson of evolution for me now is to just say NO if SATA3/USB3 are missing, since that would be a fair approximative hint of age and it turns out BiOSes got shaped by the passage of time as well. In short, i vaguely remember dealing with USB was frustrating until USB3 arrived, m'well...
eMMC is the type of technology behind the main permanent storage media of my CherryTrail 32/64 (hybrid) UEFi-ONLY LapTop, the Acer one belonging to the BiOS era instead, while GPT was added to the alphabet soup when i wasn't paying enough attention! Euh... Let see.
Ha, by the way... It turns out i downloaded 'fossapup64-9.5.iso' (Puppy Linux) and verified the presence of 'bootia32.efi' in '/EFI/boot'. It was there so this was worth flashing on a 1 GB SD unit - the smaller i could find on my desk... That flavour of Linux weights only 4M28 bytes and yet 'HardInfo' happens to be readily accessible, which is how i can now provide some details right here to address a most relevant question, considering this can interfere with a successful evaluation (imagine the rest!):
Code: Select all
Searching for "SPi"...
intel_spi_platform: Intel PCH/PCU SPI flash platform driver
intel_spi: Intel PCH/PCU SPI flash core driver
spi_nor: framework for SPI NOR
spi_pxa2xx_platform: PXA2xx SSP SPI Controller
i2c_algo_bit: I2C-Bus bit-banging algorithm
silead: Silead I2C touchscreen driver
axp20x_i2c: PMIC MFD I2C driver for AXP20X
axp20x: PMIC MFD core driver for AXP20X
i2c_multi_instantiate: I2C multi instantiate pseudo device driver
spi_pxa2xx_platform: PXA2xx SSP SPI Controller
Searching for "ACPi"
battery: ACPI Battery Driver {ACPI Non-volatile Storage}
int3403_thermal: ACPI INT3403 thermal driver
acpi_thermal_rel: Intel acpi thermal rel misc dev driver
acpi_pad: ACPI Processor Aggregator Driver
sdhci_acpi: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface ACPI driver
Additional details previously gathered from HardInfo provided by Linux Mint (v18.3 Sylvia):
fdp_i2c : I2C driver for Intel Fields Peak NFC controller
i2c_designware_platform : Synopsys DesignWare I2C bus adapter
i2c_designware_core : Synopsys DesignWare I2C bus adapter core
i2c_algo_bit : I2C-Bus bit-banging algorithm
i2c_hid : HID over I2C core driver
mmc_block : Multimedia Card (MMC) block device driver
There's also additional information found in '/var/vlog/dmesg' or similar, if i'm not mistaking. Yet i can add somewhat more global details corresponding to the evolution period, for example:
Intel Atom "Cherrytrail" 64 bits Quad CPU @ 1.44 GHz
2 GB DDR memory
32 GB eMMC mass-storage
128 GB (max.) SD(HC) Flash-Card reader
Dual Band a/b/g/n/AC WiFi with BT4-LE
The most obvious aspect being that this is a 2016 BiOS. So a bootable "Live" Linux may prove successful on that tablet and still fail on the older Acer, one of my argumention point having to do with such data collection, because Puppy Linux did seem to lack a few device drivers indeed and the Mint capture suggests those devices were installed and possibly ready. Impair "i2C" and/or "SPi" support, whatever, and trouble shall occur automatically...
Often enough our primary goal is to get an .ISO that "works" (hence for this it's got to boot 1st...), then lets start from there with some hardware profilers as 'HardInfo' to confirm what works, and hopefully provide hints to continue searching what's broken. Judging from my present example i'd say Linux Mint was better suited, though i equally recall it felt slower/heavier in practice - which would be a context where i'd wish Porteus to kick in - and it is not!
Once a hardware configuration is known such data should serve to generate custom-made .ISOs "on-demand" to ensure at least all device drivers have been loaded, instead of expecting a person to fix the problem as if we were all working for the NASA... All speaking ENGLISH using US keyboards!!
So, good luck reaching your goal long before landing on the moon! Fingers crossed.
P.S.: 'APorteus' DOES have 'HardInfo' waiting & ready, not to mention even with the display resolution set wrong it may remain accessible... Which i'd optimize to add value. My 2 cents! Please consider trying 'Linuxium' too if your 386 is actually an hybrid as mine.