Found a couple old computers in my dumpster

Originally posted by racketboy@Jun 9, 2003 @ 01:37 PM

hey is there anything that would make the Pentium capable of playing Divx?

heh, I wish. but I really doubt it.

For the MP3's you could enable file share, that is what I do. I'd like to hear some suggestions for alternatives though
 
I'm not sure if I will add a big HD to the box itself or get them off the other PC.

Either way I would like to be able to control and see what is playing from a remote PC so I don't have to use an extra monitor and keyboard to control it.

And I dont' want to spend the extra cash to make it display on my TV
 
Update:

I gave the 486 to the IT guy at work that's office is next to me.

He usually gives me crap and helps me put together stuff.

I'm still kinda debating what I should do with the Pentium parts-wise.

I'm now planning on using it as a music/file server.

I need to buy a good hard drive so I'm gonna wait til there is a sweet rebate/sale on a good WD drive.

Is their any problems with using a new drive in an old computer.

I'm also thinking about overclocking the processor.

I'll see how my little 166 does up to 200 and maybe 233, but should I pay a little cash for a 200 and overclock that?

Then there's the RAM -- should I go with more that 128MB for mostly just running 2K as a file server and running winamp?

Should I bother with the Matrox card mentioned before or would it be a waste for my purposes now?
 
I think there is a problem using a big HD in an old computer, something about the bios... the maximum capacity it can detect is 33 gigabytes or something? I don't know, try to find a bios update if you can, there might be a CD that comes with the new harddrive that contains tools to fix the problem, I remember doing that on my Celeron 433.

If you ever want to hook up a remote control to the pc, look for a remote control by Creative Labs on ebay, it comes with a program that works with Winamp 2.x, if that doesn't work, you could use another program called Girder to make any program work with the remote.
 
Yes you may have trouble installing a drive larger than 8 gig on that computer. I think the next barrier is 32 gig if >8 works fine. I was able to get a 40 gig drive working on my Intel 440LX board running a P2-233, but I had to manually type in the drive specifications - it crashed and burned if I tried auto-detect.

There are software solutions to this (the 32 gig limit) - I know Segate offer a program that you can download from their site for their drives. I'd be surprised if all other companies didn't do something similar.
 
I'm looking at Seagate for a drive, so that's good

The whole BIOS thing scares me though --- at least with my experiences with old Compaqs

remember this is the box with the freaky BIOS
 
Man, I'd love to have the 486. I have a POS 386 right now.. 20mhz, 2MB simm, 100+ MB hdd, Win 3.11. Here's its DESKTOP SNAPSHOT. I'm running Calmira on it, which makes Windows 3 look, and to some extent, behave like Windows 9X. It's pretty nifty, but it makes my system run sllllloooooooooowwwwww. 2MB of ram is far below the minimum required memory... hehe

I really love working on old computers and updating them as far as I can. I found an AMD K62 266 on the curb, and it worked fine... but it was loaded with Jehovah's Witness software and came with a 9" monochrome monitor. Loaded with Win98 SE. I also have a P166 and a P200, and a stripped down AMD K62 300 (my first computer's resurrected skeleton)... but I don't have enough sound, video, network, or modem cards to go between them, much less ram and hard drives.
 
Originally posted by Raijin Z@Jun 12, 2003 @ 05:55 PM

Man, I'd love to have the 486. I have a POS 386 right now.. 20mhz, 2MB simm, 100+ MB hdd, Win 3.11. Here's its DESKTOP SNAPSHOT. I'm running Calmira on it, which makes Windows 3 look, and to some extent, behave like Windows 9X. It's pretty nifty, but it makes my system run sllllloooooooooowwwwww. 2MB of ram is far below the minimum required memory... hehe

I really love working on old computers and updating them as far as I can. I found an AMD K62 266 on the curb, and it worked fine... but it was loaded with Jehovah's Witness software and came with a 9" monochrome monitor. Loaded with Win98 SE. I also have a P166 and a P200, and a stripped down AMD K62 300 (my first computer's resurrected skeleton)... but I don't have enough sound, video, network, or modem cards to go between them, much less ram and hard drives.

Congradulations on your 486 post!
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Nice screenshot BTW. I have used Calmira myself
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