Check out this awesomeness I got at work today

[bbhaag]

Alright so I was helping a customer weigh up some stone today and I noticed he had some PCs in the back of his truck. So I asked him about them and he said I could have them for free!
So what do you guys think I should do with them?? I was thinking about building a sweet Win98 machine with them but I'm open to suggestions.

 

[BoomerD]

It was nice of you to save the guy a trip to the dump...

 

[bbhaag]

C'mon bro that ain't cool. I'm being serious here......

What do you guys think would be better for these setups Win 98 or XP? I'm still leaning towards Win98 but XP might be the better bet. Still not sure. haha

I'll get some pics of the mainboard and other internals soon so everyone can see exactly what the insides look like.

 

[brianmanahan]

hp pocket media drive bay, and a lightscribe dvd?

 

[brianmanahan]

these look new enough that i'm guessing you'd need XP to get all the drivers to work

maybe even vista for the one on the right

(people hated on vista but i never had any problems with it at all)

 

[BurnItDwn]

Are you going to plug them into old CRTs or use somehting else?
XP's cleartype will make them more usable if you use LCDs.

Windows 2000 is more stable than 98, and the UI is a bit less bloated than xp.

Fat32 in win98 sucks compared to NTFS in Win2000 or XP.

XP has easier/better USB support

Anything that runs on XP will likely run well on 2000.
Most apps that work in win98 also work in windows xp and windows 2000.


Windows 2000 IMO might be the way to go.
I think windows 95, 98, and 98se are inferior products and offer very little, if any benefit.

 

[lxskllr]

Debian. If it must be windows, I like the 2kpro suggestion.

 

[bbhaag]

these look new enough that i'm guessing you'd need XP to get all the drivers to work

maybe even vista for the one on the right

(people hated on vista but i never had any problems with it at all)

Been looking at them a little closer and they appear to be newer than I thought. Both are mid 2000's machines maybe around circa 2004-2005. Popped the ram sticks out and they both are using the DDR standard.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Considering Microsoft no longer issues security updates for XP and Vista, I'd suggest keeping them off the internet.

 

[bbhaag]

Are you going to plug them into old CRTs or use somehting else?
XP's cleartype will make them more usable if you use LCDs.

Windows 2000 is more stable than 98, and the UI is a bit less bloated than xp.

Fat32 in win98 sucks compared to NTFS in Win2000 or XP.

XP has easier/better USB support

Anything that runs on XP will likely run well on 2000.
Most apps that work in win98 also work in windows xp and windows 2000.


Windows 2000 IMO might be the way to go.
I think windows 95, 98, and 98se are inferior products and offer very little, if any benefit.

I have a couple of CRTs I can use or an old LCD that would work. The LCD is easier to move around and works with my WFW 3.11 system so I imagine it would work ok with either one of these.
Never considered Win2000 thanks for the tip! I'll check it out.

 

[fralexandr]

You should install windows ME on them

 

[sdifox]

Where is the punch card reader?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

See what his porn fetishes are via temp files?

 

[bbhaag]

Considering Microsoft no longer issues security updates for XP and Vista, I'd suggest keeping them off the internet.

Yeah I know. Although one of my favorite things to do is boot up one of my Win 3.11 systems and cruise the internet using Internet Explorer 5.01. That Pentium Overdrive, S3 gpu, and 16mb of EDO ram really chug but they eventually load the page(HTTPS won't work of course). IRC and Usenet still work great though and are fun to browse using period correct hardware.

 

[bbhaag]

See what his porn fetishes are via temp files?

Unfortunately the guy I got them from removed the HDDs but some of my other vintage systems still had the drives in tact and it's kinda fun to go through a HDD from the early to mid '90's. It's really surprising what is left on the drives of older systems.

 

[pete6032]

My God those things are dusty. Is that a firewire port on the front?

 

[BoomerD]

C'mon bro that ain't cool. I'm being serious here......

What do you guys think would be better for these setups Win 98 or XP? I'm still leaning towards Win98 but XP might be the better bet. Still not sure. haha

I'll get some pics of the mainboard and other internals soon so everyone can see exactly what the insides look like.

Dude...so was I. Those MIGHT work...if you have some old IDE (PATA) HDD's laying around. XP (IMO) is far superior to Win98. You MIGHT even be able to run Windows 7 on those. (but I wouldn't bet on it)

 

[Red Squirrel]

Gives me nostalgia combined with PTSD. lol. The more stickers the better it is! Doing a retro build could be fun. Win98 seems like the best bet. Finding drivers might be hard though... I used to use driverguide.com back in the day but don't know if that's still the best place to go. It does seem to still exist.

Or a sleeper PC, remove all the components and put something kick ass in there. Can also do a reverse sleeper PC, take all the components and put it into a high end gaming case with RGB and whole nine yards. Water cooling a celeron would be comical.

 

[bbhaag]

Dude...so was I. Those MIGHT work...if you have some old IDE (PATA) HDD's laying around. XP (IMO) is far superior to Win98. You MIGHT even be able to run Windows 7 on those. (but I wouldn't bet on it)

Haha this ain't my first rodeo bro. When it comes to playing with vintage hardware old HDDs are definitely not the way to go. Ain't nobody got time for that and I have no desire to run Win7 on this hardware.
Anyway, old HDDs are to unreliable and impractical. That's why you get yourself some of these when you want to play around with old stuff like this. IDE to CF is the way to go.

 

[bbhaag]

Gives me nostalgia combined with PTSD. lol. The more stickers the better it is! Doing a retro build could be fun. Win98 seems like the best bet. Finding drivers might be hard though... I used to use driverguide.com back in the day but don't know if that's still the best place to go. It does seem to still exist.

Or a sleeper PC, remove all the components and put something kick ass in there. Can also do a reverse sleeper PC, take all the components and put it into a high end gaming case with RGB and whole nine yards. Water cooling a celeron would be comical.

That's a pretty cool idea. I might try that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

and works with my WFW 3.11 system

Had to check the post date.... is this a troll thread? You have a WFW 3.11 rig, currently running? OMG... I thought boomers were old.

 

[VirtualLarry]

if you have some old IDE (PATA) HDD's laying around.

I do.. just ask.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, cool find, I guess, if you're into "retro". Modern practicality is limited.

Get a Matrox Millenium PCI video card, or a VooDoo 3 PCI.

 

[bbhaag]

Had to check the post date.... is this a troll thread? You have a WFW 3.11 rig, currently running? OMG... I thought boomers were old.

Nah this ain't no troll post hold on a sec and let me post up some pics of my 486.

 

[bbhaag]

These pics are just for you Larry.






And of course what old PC wouldn't be complete without the Barnes and Nobles bought books to help you figure out how to use it!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, "Phoenix BIOS", haven't seen that in AGES!

Reminds me of the good old days of building 386DX-40 clone PCs (AMD went to 40! MegaHertz, not Ghz, you noobs)

MS-DOS 5.0 and Win 3.1, all on 3.5" floppy disks.

My rig had crazy CONFIG.SYS menuing, all added by me, to accommodate different DOS games / SoundBlaster support on/off, MSCDEX.EXE support on/off, different dev environments, etc.