I have an old 486SX with 8mb ram. Will WIN98 or WIN95 work on it?

[rnmcd]

I have an old 486SX with 8mb ram. Will WIN98 or WIN95 work on it?

I would like to give it to my young nieces if it is capable of running WIN 98 or 95. It runs on Win3.1 right now but I would prefer if they had something more up-to-date.

Thanks, rnmcd

 

[creedog]

Win 95 should run on it, slowly. Try upgrading he ram, it should be easy to find at a refurbished computer store, to atleast 32 megs.

 

[xtreme2k]

dont bother with 98

but 95 will run, just very slowly

 

[shabby]

I remember running win95 on a cyrix 486 dlc40 with 4 megs of ram.... ya it was slow

 

[Rifter]

try linux win95 will run like a slug.

 

[Frenchie]

Minimum requirements for Win95: 386 w/ 4mb ram. 486 w/8mb recommended.
For Win98: 486 w/ 16mb, 32mb recommended

 

[xtreme2k]

Win98SE requires 24MB RAM
i think

 

[Raincity]

I just installed Win95 last month on a 486/66 with 16 megs of ram and it did not run it crawled.

Rain

 

[xtreme2k]

i think i am stuffed

i had a P100 with 32MB running 95

i thought i was really unacceptable

 

[Sunner]

I used a 486 DX-66 with 8 megs for a while before, and it was running 95, dont remember what version.
In a command prompt I could type faster than the comp could output.
I'd say it was too slow to even be considdered useful for anything but similar tasks to a pocket calculator.

 

[Adul]

Ugghhh... I was ona comp with 8 MB of ram running win98se, and office 97. Talk about slow....... I could cook a meal by the time it was done booting.

 

[lostnthenet]

He said he had a 486 SX...windows requires a math co-processor from what I remember. An SX does not have a math co-processor, so I believe it will not work on this machine. It would require a DX.

 

[TMTCC]

No, it's not necessary for the processor to have a math-coprocessor for Windows to run. From experience, I had win95 running on a 486 w/8 megs of ram. It's no screamer, but it did the job for word processing and occasional web surfing.

 

[CalebTG]

Win95 will, but I wouldn't even try win98

I used to run on a SX25 with 6mb ram, a little pokey, but it was alright at the time. It was, however, a little tougher getting it to run with the minimum 4mb ram

 

[techwanabe]

I work at a bank, and we gave away over 20 old 486 PCs to employees when we upgraded. Most of these had 16 to 20 mb ram in them. At the time, I set them up with WIN 3.1 and WP and Lotus because Win 95 wasn't something I had handy. I have since loaded on a number of those old 486/33 PCs and it is slow. Makes the computer a little more useful and easier than Win 3.1, but still slow.

Get more memory and then when you get tired of a slow PC, upgrade to something more sane. There are tons of older used Pentium class PCs in mom and pop computer shops everywhere which you can pick up for a couple hundy.

 

[Petro89]

Yeah, Win 95 will run on it, but it will be fairly slow if you don't upgrade the memory, at least. Don't even try win 98. I tried it on a P100 with 48 MB, and it was unbearable.

I don't know if you'd want to spend this much time/money on it, but you could get a 32 mb chip and an upgrade processor like an evergreen or trinity works powerstacker 5x86 very cheap on e-gay, or in the forums here. Win 95 would be just fine on that. With some luck, you could probably get both for $25-30.

I have an old 486 with a trinity works 5x86 133 on it, and 36 mb ram. It runs win 95 great, as well as all MS office progs and email. Plus I still play starcraft on it. Web surfing is ok too, as long as you don't have too many windows open. 486s are still ok for that kind of stff. My 486 seems more responsive than my sister's P100.

I don't know too much about Linux, but it seems that almost everyone says it flies on a 486. You may want to check that out.

Believe it or not, I used my 486 from Feb '94 until Feb '99, which is when I got a used P166MMX. Then I biult my Athlon system. Even though I still use the latter two the most, the 486 brings back very fond memories every time I turn it on.

Regards!

 

[ArkAoss]

yeah, a company near where i live sells off old pc's all the time, and at the comp usa i worked at people were always bringin em in to see if they could add stuff, and you'd open em up and they'd have 486's with 3 inchs of dust and no upgradability to em, but they'd have like 96 megs of ram edo and would run win 98se even, if you can give em ram on that 486 you sicko then yeah it will run. and not tooooo shabily, but shabily and if your limited to 8 mb, then yeah it will run slow

 

[HaVoC]

I'd say don't bother with it. A computer 5 times as fast is dirt cheap today anyways.

 

[DaddyG]

Oops, I'm pretty sure 98 requires the math co-processor thats not present in the SX. I remember running 95 on 8megs but I'm pretty sure that the slowest CPU I used was a 486DX4-100.

 

[hubbs]

The question is WHY do you want to run 95 or 98 on that slow system. It would be just as useless as the version you have on it now anyways. You wouldn't gain much.

 

[ledzepp98]

i used to have (about a year ago) a 486dx (i think) with 12megs of ram running win98. for your daughter it should be ok running win95 if you don't want to pay for something new. if you want (and if you have open slots) i still have 2 4meg ram chips i used in my 486 somewhere around here. if you pay for shipping (maybe $2-$3 bucks) they are yours. e-mail me if you are interested...

 

[ledzepp98]

oops, you said neices...

 

[Whitedog]

It will run 95 with 8megs ram... but it will take 3 days to boot up, and the remainer of the week to start a program.. GET MORE RAM!

"....but I would prefer if they had something more up-to-date"

Truthfully, you might get that computer to run 95, but you'll be hard pressed to find ANY programs to run on it. well, that are in the least appealing.

I would start with a pint of gasoline and a match.

hehe

 

[Budman]

I ran win95 when it first came out on a 386Dx33 4 megs of ram !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you say SLOOOOWWWWW .

 

[frover2000]

My grandma has a 486dx-66 with 8megs ram and win95b, i found it to run
office 95 and IE 3.0 pretty well. I think your best bet is to go with win95, it should be perfect for basic web browsing and word processing.