[duskwuff]

> I'd expect you could run modern Debian on such a machine no problem...

Nope. Current builds of i386 Debian require a Pentium Pro or later -- I believe it's because they're compiled with the CMOV instruction, which wasn't present in the Pentium or earlier.

[mikepurvis]

Ah, good point. Looks like Debian Jessie might have worked for it? In any case, distrowatch suggests a few others like Alpine and TinyCore that might have the proper support.