No monitor. Yes router, cd, keyboard.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for here.

I've got a PIII system sitting in my closet doing nothing that I'd like to try out some flavor of *nix on.
900mhz PIII
96+ MB RAM (there's 3 sticks, one's 32 for sure, the other two are no less than that but I don't remember what they are)
4 Gig IDE HDD
PCI Ethernet card
CDRW (I'll probably never use the writer)
Onboard USB
PS2 mouse & keyboard

My main use for the system would be Apache/PHP devolopment & converting some of my Windows based laptops Automated Tasks to run on it.
Other than that I'll just tinker with somthing here & there to check *nix out.
I'm not planning to make it visible to the other side of my router.
I'd like to controll everything from my Windows based laptop that will also be connected to the router via a command prompt & definately without needing to install anything on my laptop.

My deal is that I need the install to work without a monitor, or serial cables.
I have a keyboard, a router, cd, ethernet/router to use.

Again I'm not sure what I'm looking for other than some sort of automated install, so feel free to ask questions.

Hi joebert. I haven't attacked this myself but maybe this guide is just what you are looking for. http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Install_ ... itor_HowTo

It's just what I was after too for installing a printer server where the daylight doesn't reach. Plus the graphics end of things is dead.

That's exactly what I plan to try Janrocks.

I ended up borrowing my nextdoor neighbors old monitor, finding out the RAM sticks are 32/32/128 & the 128 is incompatible with the other two, the processor is at 600Mhz instead of 900Mhz, dug out a 6GiG HDD from my box-o-parts to use as the primary.

Going with Ubuntu 7.04 via the Alternate CD right now (been installing for the last hour & a half to 2 hours now).

Ultimately I don't plan to have the monitor connected to this box, I'll be using it mainly so I can have a Win32 & *nix based box to test stuff on, as well as getting familiar with *nix.
I remember reading VNC was available for *nix awhile ago, hopefully I can get that going for emergencies, but a command prompt/shell or whatever it's called should be fine I'm guessing.

Wow.

I almost want to buy a monitor for this system now.

lol why is that?
i think what you were looking for with the command prompt in windows to connect to the linux box would be setting it up to accept connections via ssh. check here if you would like to do this and want help on setting it up (1.22.8 SSH Server).

Thanks Anarchy.

I was amazed when I realized that it was using an 800X600 resolution as the default, I thought it was using 1024X768 at the very least, the desktop looks great.
It really is a shame I want to get used to doing things through the terminal.

Everything seems easier to install on Ubuntu than on Windows. I didn't have to search for Apache/Mysql/PHP, I just had to type a few lines into a terminal window & hit "Y".
Configuring things after they're installed seems a little tougher though so far, probably because the filesystem was really confusing at first.

I really like how VNC Server was already there, I just went to
System > Preferences > Remote Desktop & that was easy to setup with a password, after that all I had to do was put VNC Viewer on my laptop atain, I already knew how to use that & it will really help with getting to know this system since the monitors gone again.

I'm using somthing called PuTTy to connect for SSH, this is going to take awhile to get used to.