Mystery lowend machine lowend grunt work lowend even temporary OS anyone

I fully expect this will resemble the postings I found in searching "No CD drive"

Most come up with: 1 message, 1 author.

Anyway, here goes.

I've got a job that involves filtering text from a document across the network, creating another text file and FTPing the new text file somewhere else on the network. Strictly command-line, Perl, cron and scripting. No need for GUI.

Been using my iBook and a Pentium laptop as a testbed, but now I want to run it day-to-day on existing, otherwise-unused hardware.

Got a nondescript, secondhand PC with a Unisys label and am told it has 166mhz processor, 32MB memory and 1.2GB hard drive.

The challenging part: It has no CD-ROM drive, and I can't identify the network card.

No SCSI port. No USB port.

It came with DOS preinstalled and I was able to copy in University Linux via a parallel-port Zip drive.

Tried various generic settings in University Linux, but to no avail, in trying to reach the network.

This would seem to put me at a dead end. Recent postings to this group on older-machine distributions don't seem to fit the bill here. Vector Linux: More memory needed. DSL: CD or USB drive needed.

Any even-lower-end options I should consider?

Ideal solution for me at this point would be a DOS tool that could scope out the network card and give me enough information to download a distribution over the network. Ideally, I'd also like instructions that are heavy on the part of the operation where I abandon DOS and destroy it while having enough of a Linux system to proceed further.

One further possibility: I've got a D-Link DFE-530TX+ network card sitting on a shelf. This is a last resort as I have zero hardware background and fully expect to destroy both card and computer the minute I crack the case.

If I don't break the hardware, I'll still be scuffling to use it. Whatever additional files I need to use it (and graduate to a useful distribution) will have to come through via floppy or the Zip.

John Campbell