recieved an old amd 486 Dx4 120 system, what old parts should I salvage

[bigslammer]

my uncle gave me his old amd 486 and I was wondering what parts to take out and what parts to chuck away. Are there any parts on this system that I could use on my current pc. It had an old quantum hardrive that I was thinking about putting my whole swapfile on this drive. Would this improve performance on my pc. How do I find out how fast this drive is. Or am I better off leaving my swapfile on my current far newer drive. IS this cpu of any use or should I just put on my sisters old 486 machine or maybe a paperweight.

[welsh wizard]

Why not get a removable hard tray for Quantum that way if you wanted you could move files around between comps with out lots of work.

You say use as paper weight on sister comp 486 which is the faster system, if DX4-120 is, be a gent and swap her and upgrade hers with what ever you can, she might find extra hard drive very usefull and maybe the ram would help. Worth its weight in gold if it helps her out.

[scourge]

It sounds like a fairly decent system. The RAM is most likely 72pin EDO. See how much you have in it (8,16,32,?). Extra RAM never hurts. Is it a PCI or VLB based mobo? If it's PCI, it's still worth something. Also, it probably has some removable cache ram chips. You might be able to upgrade your sister's comp from 256k to 512k cache. There's probably some pretty useful stuff left in that old system.

[KillerBug]

Do not use the drive for a SWAP file, it will slow you down to nothing. If it has any cards other than a VLB video card or an HD contoler card, they may be usefull. f it has any PCI cards, they may also help. Oh, and if it is in a tower, you could base a system up to 600mhz in the case.

[bigslammer]

thx killerbug,welsh wizard and scourge I've noticed that I could salvage a lot more parts than I first thought.

[bigslammer]

thx killerbug,welsh wizard and scourge I've noticed that I could salvage a lot more parts than I first thought.

[emcron]

I wouldn't take anything out. Why not just leave it as it is and use it for something. Where I work all we have is 486's, and they are still very useable. I have one 486DX33 with 32MB ram running win95 and Office97. Its not the fastest but runs pretty well for a 486.

[KillerBug]

I still have a 486/66 with redhat 6 on it, kinda slow, but still usefull, still, give the parts to your sister, you will not be using the computer as much as she will.