Excellent write up! I have an older ThinkPad 760E (1995) that these notes could be really helpful for, since the hardware is fairly similar. I had pretty good success with OpenBSD but haven't tried NetBSD yet.

> The most viable player is mpg123. It manages to play an online low-fi radio stream with only slight stuttering when other CPU-heavy tasks are running.

I want to try this. Such a cool way to fully utilize the system (network, sound, display) while working on code or in a terminal.

> Despite having a USB port, the 380Z doesn't support USB boot.

If you'd like to try something, I found Plop Boot Manager can sometimes add bootable USB support on hardware that doesn't otherwise allow it. I love having Plop installed on all my retro hardware as it provides good support for booting from floppy, CD, USB, etc., plus it has a neat retro/hacker vibe.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html