OLD PC WHAT TO DO ?

vickister

vickister

vickister

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I have a spare old pc

possible an old 486 not sure

Wanting to possible turn it in to file storage?

is this possible?


can any one help

also have a dlink 624 router
 
You might be able to use it solely as a firewall but I'd think that file server usage will be pushing it a bit too far.

Th3D0n - could you edit out the swearing please as it isn't allowed as stated in the FAQ. :)
 
vickister said:
I have a spare old pc

possible an old 486 not sure

Wanting to possible turn it in to file storage?

is this possible?


can any one help

also have a dlink 624 router
Click to expand...



just give it to me :)

wait, did you say 486?
there is really no use for this anymore (but many will dissagree),
 
Didn't older motherboards used in 486s and early pentiums have a limit to the size of hard disk that could be used. If this is the case it would make them little use as a file server.
 
I know very little about the machine until i power it own

it was given to me for spares to throw out and i thought that i could use it for a file server.

What i will do later on this after noon is run belarc on it and repart back to you what i have on it
 
johnno93 said:
Didn't older motherboards used in 486s and early pentiums have a limit to the size of hard disk that could be used. If this is the case it would make them little use as a file server.
Click to expand...

Yep, many had a limit because 16bit Windows had a limit to the size of hard drive it could cope with anyway making larger drives redundant. However most hard drive manufacturers provided (may still provide for all I know) a bootstrap loader that allowed this limit to be overcome, essentially it just fooled the bios into booting from the drive. Not ideal and unlikely to make it worth saving a 486 but I'm just passing on the info for the sake of it. :)
 
give it to an ICT museum, it's a future antique. or keep it somewhere & in years to come show it your children/grandchildren so they can see what computers were like in the "olden days" of Computing :rolleyes:
 
Stick Windows 3.11 on it, and give it to your kids - then wait for that question: "Dad, where's MSN installed at?" :D:D
 
if its a 486 if it has 16mb+ of ram it can run windows 98, if its a 386 with 4mb+ of ram it can run windows 95, chances are its pointless because im assuming its ISA = no network cards and it wont be able to take any decent sized hard drive.
 
mattyrigby00 said:
if its a 486 if it has 16mb+ of ram it can run windows 98, if its a 386 with 4mb+ of ram it can run windows 95, chances are its pointless because im assuming its ISA = no network cards and it wont be able to take any decent sized hard drive.
Click to expand...
Running 98 on any 486 would be incredibly painful, 95 would be bad enough.
There were plenty of ISA network cards made, and you could most likely get a second hand one for pennies+P&P. However, these would have course be 10mbit/s cards, which immediately limits the maximum speed to ~1MB/s, not a lot of good for a file server.
As for hard disks, there is a fair chance it would be able to use current ide hardisks, if the manufactures overlay software/bootloader were used (e.g. Maxtor’s maxblast software).
And finally, if you were to try and use it, some form of Linux (probably Slackware or dsl) would probably be best, although I think trying to use it for anything but a foot rest would be a waste of time....
 
Its nice you had this vision of bringing an old machine back to life as a file server, you could have called it "phoenixServ" or something equally heart warming. :p

Computers aren't like cars, classics don't look cool or perform well.
 
Lanz said:
Yup, i used to have a 486sx 20mhz, I overclocked it to 25mhz tho.
Click to expand...

Did you feel the power? Thinking about it in perspective to overclock by 25% is pretty cool!

Well I dont know about OC much but in my experiance I can only get it to about 10%
 
To be brutally honest a 486 will likely be more trouble that it's worth. As mentioned you will likely be talking ISA only i.e. will need to track down an ISA gfx card (if not present), NIC etc.

Regarding the hds, even with a BIOS update it wouldn't surprise me to see a fairly paltry limit (137gig max or less I'd imagine). No idea how modern hds would perform on old motherboards either - remember it probably doesn't even have UDMA.

Then there's the hassle of setting up a really old version of windows. To run win2k you need at least a P133 so you'll likely be stuck with Win95b/NT4 (assuming you have a license). Then of course it will be slow as hell with anything less than 32meg RAM at a minimum (not many 486s shipped with that much). So Linux may turn out to be the only option...

My opionion is that it's just simply not worth messing around with anything older than a Pentium2 class system with 64meg RAM. Main thing being with those chipsets you will be getting PCI, AGP, UDMA33, plus of course a system that is capable of running Windows 2000.

A few years back I acquired a decomissioned P133 from work for £1 - seemed like a good deal at the time, slotted in some old EDO simms and a 2.1gig drive I had lying about to beef it up a bit but it was just a waste of time to be honest.
 
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