By a stroke of luck I managed to score a cheap, small and good condition IBM 600e, a PII with adequate horsepower for minor coding and quite importantly, writing. It’s got Xubuntu now, and I’ve found out a battery repack will cost approximately Php1,600 and I think it’ll be good to go. I won’t post the orig price because it’s just too ridiculously cheap.
Anyway, I bought a USB NIC for it, and am trying to deal with driver issues. Again, documenting here so I’ll remember. Here are the files contained in the Davicom driver for Linux 2.6:
dm9601.c
dm9601.h
Makefile
readme.txt
What it looks like:

Bought at CDR King for Php300.00, product page here.
NOTE: Turns out it’s a pIII.