In a message dated 7/4/2006 8:33:50 PM US Mountain Standard Time, mike.l.schwartz@gmail.com writes:

My first few years accessing the Aztec Free-Net,

from home I used a dial-up connection from an old

DOS machine with a 286 and ONE mb of RAM.
(1024 KB).

I think it was too small for even the relatively smaller

WINdows in those days (3.1 say), and I am not sure

whether it could have run Gnu/Linux (I never tried).

286s cannot run regular Linux systems. ELKS represents an 8086-compatible Linux-alike though, and you can run Minix. My first Unix system was a 286-16, 1Mb memory, and Minix 2.0.