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What to do with my old 386's ?!??!

K

KiLLaZ

Senior member
It's time for cleaning and I've got 2 386's with 2 14" monitors and a whole bunch of mice, keyboards, generic speakers, etc. that just HAS to go. I'm pretty sure everything still works, but what am I suppose to do with them ? I'm sure this'll spark some "interesting" comments... but any serious ideas ? Just throw 'em out ?
 
Give it to a school or something. I'm giving mine to a computer repair class so they can mess with it. My dad gets a tax write-off too.. 🙂
 
See, that's what I was thinking... donate it to some organization, but I have no idea who would want it.
 
Do not use RC5, and do not attempt to play MP3s with them either. They are 386s, think for a minute. They will do nothing for RC5, it's useless. You think you can play MP3s on a 386? A P90 has trouble playing good quality mp3s.. If you can even get it to play (on a P90), it's utterly impossible to do anything else. And that is on a P90.

Any 386 will not be capable of satisfyingly playing any MP3. *Maybe* if you play a 56kbps low quality one? Even so..

You could try to sell them or give them away. Just try to be sure that they will at least help someone or make someone happy, that's what counts.

-RSI
 
I've got an old 386 (I think it's a 386, I never actually cracked it open to find out), and my mom thinks we can actually make $50 by selling it. Any suggestions on how to tell her that she's severly overestimating the market for old, useless computers?
 
Just find a local computer recycling center that will safely get rid of it. It's too old and slow to be of use to anyone, even TA.🙁
 
I take old comps like that and salvage every spare part I can. Power supplies can be used to power fans for computers or stereo equipment. Floppy drives are always handy to have around. Hard drives can be used for cheapo linux servers/routers. Spare jumpers off the mobo are always good to have around. IDE/floppy cables can always be put to use. Old cases can be used for shelving and such. After all that you'll probalby left with a proc, mobo, some RAM, and random expansion cards. They're good for smashing with a sledgehammer 😉
 
Take it to various computer stores and ask them how much it would cost to upgrade it to run windows 2000.

🙂

Scraps
 
Don't donate 386 machines, they will probably just end up in a pile of machines that people only donated for a tax write-off and the company to which they were donated will probably have no use for them. I remember clearly running MP3's on my old 486 without trouble, of course you couldn't do anything else, but it didn't require a P-90. There is very little that you can do with those 386 unfortunately, maybe a router, but that's about it. I hate to see them get destroyed, but there is very little alternative.

Zenmervolt
 
RSI, sure you can. You just have to use the right software. 😉

Hence, I gave him a link to some 16bit (perfect for Win3.xx) MP3 player which is really tiny. In fact, that software was specifically made for Win3.xx- so it must work! Sheesh!

In fact, Winplay3's sound is better than WinAMP...so that was my problem! (I had a thread about it in General Hardware) It was friggin winamp...oh well. 🙂
 
take it apart and use the mobo and such to make useful things. For example, I have made a few picture frames, notebooks, bookmarks, lite-switch covers, clocks.

Or you could always OC it! lol
 
Turn it into a router!

www.freesco.org

FREESCO (stands for FREE ciSCO) is a free replacement for commercial routers supporting up to 3 ethernet/arcnet/token_ring/arlan network cards and up to 2 modems.
Why should you use Freesco?
Ease of use - it's insanely easy to set up
Thoroughly documented - it's more or less self contained, read one doc and you're off and running
Like most players in this field, it runs off one floppy
FreeSco runs in as little as 6 Mb RAM.
Unique Web Control Panel
 
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