Turn Old Laptop into Portable Media Player

[stubornallstar]

I have an old Sony PCG-731. Thats intel pentium 200mhz with a max of 128mb pc100ram. I have been desperatly trying to find an os that is capable of both attaching to my external hd and also play mpeg/avi files seemlessly. I have ran XP pro on it, but that eats up way too much of the proccessor/ mem, 98se doesnt seem to work with my external, and ive tried Zenwalk with out any luck.
If anyone has any suggestions of a os that might work for me, please let me know! i would really like to get this thing working to make my car rides a little more enjoyable!

 

[macdude425]

Then you're looking into the *nix family.

I will warn you that nothing will seamlessly play video files that runs at 200mhz.

 

[The_Tobes99]

yes, that laptop just isnt powerful enough to be a media pc

 

[stubornallstar]

how can that be? the laptop came with 98 and that has media player. it was originally made to be able to play media so why could it not work now with a more basic os still capable of getting my external?

 

[The_Tobes99]

it was design for video files encoded in that time, more complex codecs now & that simply doesnt have the power to decode them