Best OS for a 486 33sx? *UPDATED YET AGAIN* for any that care.

[Harrald]

I have an old 486 33sx/24 meg ram/170meg HD that I would like to revive and add to my home network. I am running Win98 on the rest of the comps and can't seem to keep the old one from crashing with 98.

So my question is


What is the best OS I can run on that paperweight and keep it in the network?

Thanks

 

[jhu]

linux, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd. take your pick.

 

[mastarecoil]

DOS!!! ITS NOT DEAD

Garrett.

 

[Ladi]

What do you want to do with the machine? IE, use as router, fileserver, etc etc etc...

~Ladi

 

[Harrald]

The reason i'm interested in bringing life back to the old dog is so in my guest room visitors can check mail or surf the net. I have family stay over from time to time so another computer could always help.

I have a router/DSL connection. I also figure it could be used as a backup for the kids homework computer (in case of emergency).

If I'm trying to whip a dead horse let me know. I was just thinking (always a problem) that it might be a nice addition to the network.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Beat the Horse!!! Beat the Horse!!! j/k

Perhaps Win 3.11

Beleave it or not, there are still some copies floating around out there. Just the other day I found a copy on 8 floppies in our storage room. Along with DOS 6.22..KEWL. I like digging up old relics.

170MB HD..ouch. That's barely enough ram for a decent running machine these days.

 

[Ladi]

win3.1, office97, IE4 or 5.* (probably need to track down trumpet winsock too) would be slow, but probably better than nothing at all...also look into win3.11 for workgroups. Random flavors of *nix or *bsd may not be usuable for your purposes because of the size of the HD and what X takes to run.

~Ladi

 

[fow99]

DOS+Win3.11 and then install Opera on it since it is small and not memory hungry.
Linux? Maybe if you can handle it.

 

[UnixFreak]

Dos 6.22, win 3.1 would be perfect. Or Linux.

 

[Ladi]

My only concern with linux would be that I know X takes a decent amount of resources to run, which could become an issue. Also, the only office suites really available are wordperfect and staroffice; don't know about WP, but I know staroffice is a tad bloated and may not be easy for those used to MS's suite to use.

~Ladi

 

[CowboyBebop]

Beos(TCPip), Linux, and dos

 

[TravisBickle]

Win3.11 is cheap and readily understandable for a Windows98 user (most of the world.) I had a computer running it quite recently. Just be careful the browser is not too greedy on resources.

 

[Toad]

Stick 95 on there. You've got a fair amount of RAM so it should be tolerable. If you can get a version before OSR-2 that would be best.

 

[goldboyd]

i'd recommend 95B

 

[orbadelic]

I would have to say go with win 3.11. as much as I would like you to use Free/OpenBSD on the system it sounds like for your uses you would be best off using office 9x, Opera, and win 3.11 due to system issues. you could even get a little rc5 action going on the side, as for how productive it would be thats a whole other story.

 

[Harrald]

Update...


I loaded a stripped down version of 95 on the beast. It's slow as heck but at least it's runnin'. I've never used opera before so that's my next move.

At least it's connecting to the network and I can use some of my other comps as App servers for it.

Sheesh I remember when I bought that animal. It was state of the art. Didn't come with a CDrom so I installed a 2 speed as soon as they came on the market.

Thanks for all the help. If 95 crashes I'll look around for a copy of 3.11 (I know there's one in this house somewhere) and see if I can get that going.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Blayze]

I would also go with DOS 6.22/Win 3.11

 

[Zach]

I've installed 95 on a 386dx, and it was very solid.. nothing more.. no speed.. but it didn't crash. Felt like it though.

 

[DaveNCheez]

Id go 3.11 dos and then whatever
get an OLD version of Office as office9X is a Win32 app

you could get office 7 or 8 if you could find it

Dave

 

[IamDavid]

You should try BeOS..

 

[Priit]

Well, if you would have 486DX, 32Mb RAM and ~1Gb HDD, you could run Win2k on it. I just finished installing W2k pro into 486DX2/66 with 32Mb of RAM and 1,6Gb HDD. Some people said that W2k will never run on 486, but it does... it's dog slow, boots up within half an hour, crashes sometimes, but RUNS !!!

 

[Witor]

Im looking at an old 486 dx2 - 50 with 16megs of ram, running Win95 "a".

Its stable, and, surprisingly not slow.

The original version of win95 is only around 50-60 megs installed, at most. Really quite tiny. Add only what you need from office and an small browser, and you should be okay I think.

 

[Wallysaurus]

I've got a 486 DX4 100 with 16MB and Win95a running very stable and it's not all that slow.

 

[Harrald]

Once again thanks all.

I was so inspired by you responces that I dragged out a P133 with 48 memory and revieved it also. Now I have far to many comps running on the network and wifey thinks I'm nuts.

So thanks folks I'm a happy camper.

 

[Ulfwald]

Well, If you have that many comps on your network, Why not join TA Cube and start doing crack. contact Dennilfloss for more information....