Uncreative Labs

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:29 pm

I do agree that Win 98 SE would be a good choice.

I wanted to add, though, that you can also run the latest version of *BSD or Linux on this machine.

Here is a free (GPL) multiboot program, the equivalent of System Commander or whatever

http://gag.sourceforge.net/

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

it is a common thing to put too new an os on a slower
or weaker CPU with not enough memory.
and some old chipsets and motherboards just will not take enough ram. This information is sometimes hard to determine.
I had an old compaq 486-66 and withj the add-on
card I could put in lots of ram. oit would clock up
\but after bootup noting would detect that I had 89 megs.

98 behaves better than 95 ( the first version)
but is pretty close to 95(c)
but the mb likely has a "528
hard drive limit.
heck a pentium mb ( not mmx compatibel)
was 128m limited and was strange acting with a 10.2 gb hard disk.
those " forgotten" limitations jump up and bite you

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Even if you can cram 128MB in a 486 MB you will probably run into issues where the cache only works with 64MB of it making the whole system much slower (same issue with some Pentium MB chipsets).

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

a couple of things preven "too much ram"
large 72 pin chips are rare
as well as 4 mb 30 pin chips
I heard about 16 mb 30 pin, but don't really know if they exist.

many older 168 dimms, and some 486 and even early pentium boards have only 2 168 pin dimm slots, the larger ones are 3.3 v ( usually there is a jumper to select 5v or 3.3v)
but the effect will be ignored by the mb. it may clock up to thje real installed ram, but not seen by the os
I suspect dos and wfwg may only see about 64 megs of ram.
back in wordstar 3.3 days, the wschange program was written in basic , later versiosn were com files
but a common error was " not enough memory" when you had 544 k or 640 k installed. you had to load a ram eating TSR to reduce available ram. so you could configure wordstar 3.30.
( everybody then tried hard to have a FULL 640k of ram.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I have plenty of 16MB 30 pin SIMMs (and a few rare 8MB ones), they do exist but unless I find them inside machines I won't pay the $40+ a set they cost.

The Intel Pentium chipsets that used 168 pin DIMMs tend to be the VX/TX variety that can only cache 64MB of RAM. My older server quality HX chipset boards can cache 256MB and they only used 72 pin SIMMs.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

I've gone as high as Windows 2000 pro on 486 hardware, my favs though are still DOS 6.22/WFWG 3.11 and Windows 98 Second Edition though, those two seem to be the most stable and easily handled.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

my wife's mtech 486 took a amd 120 and later we upgraded to a 133. it required a bios flash and a " hat full of jumpers" info sent by mtech.
and the chip worked at 133 . before it would only do 120.
I put the chip in my M919 board I was given ( in the hospital in 1997 after my first bypass)
it worked at 120 and later was given an "obsolete"
amd 133. the bios was not flashable.
I still have both board and last time I looked they both were working.

back to the OS on a 486
95 and 98 & 2000 are all PNP.
95 had some issues with pnp
2000/xp lite might make w 2000 usable.

Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:25 am

Would you be willing to ship a bunch of those 16mb jobs? Maybe some of the 8mb as well? I've got a vlb board that will happily take 8 of them 16mb or 8mb and a 386dx-40 that will be more than happy to host the same....

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

k2x4b524p wrote:

Would you be willing to ship a bunch of those 16mb jobs? Maybe some of the 8mb as well? I've got a vlb board that will happily take 8 of them 16mb or 8mb and a 386dx-40 that will be more than happy to host the same....

If you are refering to my 16MB 30 pin SIMMs, I am keeping them all for my Mac 950's that need them (16 30 pin SIMM slots).

You can find them on ebay all the time, sets of 4 start at $40 I think plus shipping.

Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:30 am

unknown_k : Damn.....

wedgroot : W2K pro will run comfortably on a 486-66 to 120 or a 5x86-133 with 128+ ram, it's a little slow due to software timings, but i didn't have ANY problems with it doing anything that xp could do on pentium hardware.

Now if you could get it up on a 386dx 16, that would be TRUELY impressive
or an sx-16 maxed out with ram, it WOULD be slower than snot, but i'd pay money for that showing...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

A 386 SX has a limit of 16MB of RAM. Were many or any 386 DX/16's made? I figured the DX started at 25 in quantity.

Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:37 am

the dx can be slowed to 16 i believe, and i know the sx is limited to 16mb ram, that's the caveat

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Just an FYI---the DX16 was the first 386 made. It had some issues which were eventually worked out (see the "double-sigma" comments from below).

http://www.cpu-collection.de/?l0=co&l1=Intel&l2=i386+DX

In the previous job I had, we were still using thousands of 386sx's in new PWB boards until just a couple years ago, when Intel finally pulled the plug on manufacturing them...

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 4:18 am

Fascinating, just checked that out, i have one of those harris 286-20 chips, makes me wonder what i can squeeze out of one of those, it's oscillator can is in a socket too...... *evil grin*

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Likely 20MHz. Remember, in the "olden-days", a single crystal controlled everything on the board and bus, so changing it meant everything else sped up as well, and lots of the peripherals designed around a board weren't up to "prehistoric overclocking". On the other hand, if you've got one of the rare boards (for that day) that would allow reconfiguring the clock speed by either switches/jumpers/BIOS, then you may have some luck...