Bringing an old PC back to life!

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 6:44 pm

I took a look at my old 486 (80486) and decided it might be good to put it back into service. However, my knowledge of older techonology is sketchy. For example, I'm not sure if it supports ISA or EISA or both peripherals. Also, there's a cable with a weird looking connector that connects to the 5 1/4" floppy drive that also has a 34 pin regular floppy 'plug' on the end. The part where you connect the plug on the cable to the 5 1/4" drive looks like the pins on RAM. The good news is that while my family used this computer it was taken care of very well. Nothing is broken and the thing has almost no dust in it after 10 years. So, is it worth salvaging? What could I use it for? A router etc.? Please give me your input!

P.S. I need a DIN-6 keyboard or a PS/2 > DIN-6 adaptor for use with a keyboard. The serial port is in use by the mouse. I also need a floppy drive for it as the I took it out for use on another computer. If you want to donate either of these to me, I'll foot the bill for shipping.

Veggita2099 · Post by **Veggita2099** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:17 pm

You can buy used diskette drives cheap on ebay sometimes. One time I found a auction that had 5 3.5 drives for $5 (plus $4 shipping). I have used a few of them and they seem to work good.

I think I know the pin your talking about, I used to have a 5 1/4 drive that pluged into that. I used to have a ton of those keyboard adapters but they have all been given away, used, sold, or just lost. Would probably cost about $5 to buy one of those from a Radio Shack or Office depot or something.

Older PC's like that are just as easy as newer ones to work with. Only hard things about some of them is you had to use those annoying IDE cards sometimes when the motherboard didn't have IDE/floppy connectors. Also you sometiems had to set jumpers on your video/sound cards, however those should be all ready set in your case.

I would imagine it uses ISA being a 486. I am actually not even sure what EISA is, are you referring to those older cards that looked like a ISA card with a PCI card at the end of them? I always thought those where called VLB cards?

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:23 pm

Veggita2099 wrote:I would imagine it uses ISA being a 486. I am actually not even sure what EISA is, are you referring to those older cards that looked like a ISA card with a PCI card at the end of them? I always thought those where called VLB cards?

EISA is Extended ISA. Basically it's ISA, but it has an extension of pins. I think we're thinking about the same thing. The thing though is that it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive and the HDD capacity is somewhere between 150MB-200MB. Now assuming I don't upgrade anything (if I can I will, but I'm going under the assumption I can't) except I add an ISA NIC, could my computer potentially be a useable low-level terminal using either Windows 3.11 or some sort of old Linux? It looks like it'll boot up fine. Without a keyboard there was a POST failure and I think the CMOS battery is dead.

Veggita2099 · Post by **Veggita2099** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:33 pm

AuroEdge wrote:
Veggita2099 wrote:I would imagine it uses ISA being a 486. I am actually not even sure what EISA is, are you referring to those older cards that looked like a ISA card with a PCI card at the end of them? I always thought those where called VLB cards?
EISA is Extended ISA. Basically it's ISA, but it has an extension of pins. I think we're thinking about the same thing. The thing though is that it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive and the HDD capacity is somewhere between 150MB-200MB. Now assuming I don't upgrade anything (if I can I will, but I'm going under the assumption I can't) except I add an ISA NIC, could my computer potentially be a useable low-level terminal using either Windows 3.11 or some sort of old Linux? It looks like it'll boot up fine. Without a keyboard there was a POST failure and I think the CMOS battery is dead.

Im sure you could upgrade the Hard Drive and add a Cd-Rom to it. It may even be possible to put a faster processor in there, or possibly a overdrive. a lot of 486 PC's back then had a big blue slot near the CPU for the OVerdrive chips. Also I know at one point I was able to get a laptop running windows 3.11 to work on a network with windows 95 and windows 98. Im not sure about newer windows though. If it is a 150 meg HD that would be enough for windows 3.11 or windows 95. I couldn't tell you on Linux I know nothing about it.

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:36 pm

Heres what i'd do with it.
How many pci slots does it have>
First buy a internal USB2 pci card.
Also some 486 boards and use a pin converter and use oringal pentium 1 cpu's which you can find on ebay easly.
Next a nice 20Gb hard drive.
If you got another pci free maybe a geforce 2 will do.
Then you can get your classic gaming on. Play some doom, quake, nes/gene/snes emulation on. Make sure you use a older windows 95 or 98se. linux would also be a good choice.

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 8:19 pm

What the fuck is the point of putting a USB2.0 PCI card and a fucking GeForce 2 in a god damn 486? You aren't going to run anything on a system that old that'll use a GeForce 2 or USB2.0. That thing can probably barely handle USB1.1. Quake requires a Pentium Processor (I just checked the back of the box) and none of those systems have emulators that actually use video card hardware acceleration for video, AFAIK.

AuroEdge, you're best bet would be to install Linux on it. Install something small like Debian and screw around with it to learn a thing or two.

Post by **Quzar** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:02 pm

win98 would be a lot more compatible and will run ok depending on the amount of ram (requires 8mb)

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:13 pm

A mini-Linux system should work fine on there, and you might be able to get some use out of it for something. You could use it as a router, or just play around with it, but don't expect to be able to run GUI apps on there.

You could probably set it up as a remote terminal too. For Linux systems, that's really easy - you basically install an X server on the old machine, and you can then connect to a much more powerful machine and run programs over the network. It'll be slower than running them on a faster machine, but much quicker than they'd ever be on a 486, assuming they worked, which they probably wouldn't. It won't run games, but other stuff should be fine.

You can do the same with a Windows machines, but it's a little more complex. You can either have a Windows client connecting to a Windows server using RDP (with a load of registry hacks to allow two users to be logged in at once), or do something similar with a Linux client connecting to a Windows server. It won't run games, but other stuff should be fine.

You could stick DOS on it, and use it to run old DOS games that are old enough that they don't work on modern hardware, but new enough that you can't emulate them yet.

You could use it as a doorstop. Or a paperweight.

Post by **Quzar** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:30 pm

ooo, you could use it as a mame machine. there is that x86 optimized mame program that runs well even on 486s for a lot of arcade machines.

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:38 pm

Xylene wrote:What the fudge is the point of putting a USB2.0 PCI card and a fudging GeForce 2 in a god damn 486? You aren't going to run anything on a system that old that'll use a GeForce 2 or USB2.0. That thing can probably barely handle USB1.1. Quake requires a Pentium Processor (I just checked the back of the box) and none of those systems have emulators that actually use video card hardware acceleration for video, AFAIK.

AuroEdge, you're best bet would be to install Linux on it. Install something small like Debian and screw around with it to learn a thing or two.

Like I said he could get a P1 pin convert for the board and the G2 would pull in enough speed to make quake run. I thought zsnes and gens both had hardware accel in them....

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:45 pm

quzar wrote:ooo, you could use it as a mame machine. there is that x86 optimized mame program that runs well even on 486s for a lot of arcade machines.

You think so? Do tell me more about it. Is it an operating system or an application? There's not much to do with it except play Chip's Challenge or Jezzball. Somebody was telling me at school there's a program for Windows 3.1 that puts adds a toolbar at the bottom of the screen like in 95 on up with a Start Menu. I don't really want to put 95 on there simply b/c of how crappy and buggy 95 is. Not only that, but I'm sure there would be driver issues. I may put Linux on there. So, if I go with Linux, what specific distro. & build should I go with? Damn Small Linux?

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:52 pm

Sorrie wrote:
Xylene wrote:What the fudge is the point of putting a USB2.0 PCI card and a fudging GeForce 2 in a god damn 486? You aren't going to run anything on a system that old that'll use a GeForce 2 or USB2.0. That thing can probably barely handle USB1.1. Quake requires a Pentium Processor (I just checked the back of the box) and none of those systems have emulators that actually use video card hardware acceleration for video, AFAIK.

AuroEdge, you're best bet would be to install Linux on it. Install something small like Debian and screw around with it to learn a thing or two.
Like I said he could get a P1 pin convert for the board and the G2 would pull in enough speed to make quake run. I thought zsnes and gens both had hardware accel in them....

There's no way I'd try playing Gens or ZSnes on it. On my current setup, I barely pull a full 60FPS with full quality on (which is the idea eh?). Maybe it'd work to play it normally, but in that case I'd want to play it on a TV to blur out the edgies. And getting TV Out to work would be a bitch eh? I have another PC with 750MHz Duron & 256MB RAM that I thought of using as an old school & emulation station, but if I could use my 486 to do this I will do it. At any rate, I'd still need a good distro. of Linux that'll run on a 486 processor. Maybe I could use it to Parallel Port games that I own to my CD64 too instead of using CDs...

Veggita2099 · Post by **Veggita2099** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:00 pm

Yea there is no game that will run on that PC that will require a geforce 2. Id just find a cheap 2 meg video card, or just use whatever it has if it has one.

I was looking through some old stuff and I got like 4 of those old amd 486dx4 100megahertz processors if it will support that.

Also I think windows 98 requires aprox 200 megs of hd space, that HD might not be able to hold it well. I think Windows 95 only requires between 60 and 90 megs of space. This all of course depends on which features you install.

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:14 pm

Geforce 2 was simply the cheapest card i could think of that they sell at major retailer thats still made. That or a ATI 9200.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:21 pm

I thought zsnes and gens both had hardware accel in them....

No. None. You could argue that the Windows version uses DirectX, which uses hardware-accelerated blitting to draw the finished image to the screen, but that doesn't really speed things up, because the CPU still has to do all the work.

Older arcade games (like the 8-bit ones) might run on MAME, and you might be able to get a couple of 16-bit games working playably with RAINE, but they probably won't be very fast. I think the Dreamcast would pretty much beat this thing in every way when it comes to emulation anyway.

At any rate, I'd still need a good distro. of Linux that'll run on a 486 processor.

Your best bet would probably be Slackware or Debian on hardware that old. Depends on exactly what you want to do with it.

Post by **Quzar** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:59 pm

AuroEdge wrote:
quzar wrote:ooo, you could use it as a mame machine. there is that x86 optimized mame program that runs well even on 486s for a lot of arcade machines.
You think so? Do tell me more about it. Is it an operating system or an application? There's not much to do with it except play Chip's Challenge or Jezzball. Somebody was telling me at school there's a program for Windows 3.1 that puts adds a toolbar at the bottom of the screen like in 95 on up with a Start Menu. I don't really want to put 95 on there simply b/c of how crappy and buggy 95 is. Not only that, but I'm sure there would be driver issues. I may put Linux on there. So, if I go with Linux, what specific distro. & build should I go with? Damn Small Linux?

http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/vantage.html

It can run 1942 on a 486DX 25mhz at 40fps

If you are gonna put a 20gig on it, then i would reccomend that you install windows 98.

Also, you could probably get sms, nes, etc emulation going to a limited degree on there. definetly 2600 =P

Clessy · Post by **Clessy** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:26 pm

I had a 486 just a few years back and I dont remeber Gen runing that slow really. Use gencryxx or whatever its called its fast as hell.

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:51 pm

I looked at the computer and found this out without being able to boot it up (no adequate DIN-6 keyboard or adaptor):
- it has an IDE Host Card but there's only one slot for an HDD :\. I might be able to use one of my adaptors to fit an HDD in a 5.25" bay.
- there's 8 sticks of RAM. I wasn't about to take any of them out, so whatever that means I can only guess. Possibly that I have at least 8MB RAM?
- the CPU is an Intel i486 SX. There's no OverDrive socket, and the CPU appears to be glued in.
- 4 open ISA slots
- A WDC video card manufactured by BT.

That's pretty much all there is to say about it. If you have any thoughts or ideas, let me know! I'm looking to add a CD-ROM drive, a better video card, RAM, & a bigger HDD. Should you know of something highly compatible that's good, let me know about that too please (might be a good way to get rid of old useless junk lying around your house ).

Post by **Quzar** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 1:07 am

I have never seen a stick of ram under 1MB, so that is probably 8mb.

If you overclock it even slightly (should be plenty easy if you just use some active cooling) then you should be able to use vantage and play every game it supports at full speed. Things I would reccomend for those 4 ISA slots would be a network card, an IDE controller card, a sound card, and a video card.

AuroEdge · Post by **AuroEdge** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 1:26 am

quzar wrote:I have never seen a stick of ram under 1MB, so that is probably 8mb.

If you overclock it even slightly (should be plenty easy if you just use some active cooling) then you should be able to use vantage and play every game it supports at full speed. Things I would reccomend for those 4 ISA slots would be a network card, an IDE controller card, a sound card, and a video card.

I looked at their benchmarks on the Vantage site, and they actually have a computer listed as
Processor: 'Intel Overdrive' 486 SX 25
Memory : 8Mb
The game that does the worst is Zaxxon at 30FPS. It doesn't say much in the way of other stats or what operating system used. I'm Veggita might be able to sell/give me a 486DX4 100MHz, but I'm not sure if my CPU is glued in or not. There doesn't appear to be glue, but they might've just used a little. Another problem is knowing how to set the jumpers on the mobo and if the BIOS I have is compatible.