old 486

[alondra]

my nextdoor neighbor lady,s son gave her an old business 486. I'd like to make it work for her for Email .maybe get her on one of the free EMail programs. I,ve cleaned out all the old business stuff and now has win 3.1 its 33mhz, has 111mb free on HD. 640k mem. tried to put in an extra simms i have but the slots are to short?. It doesnt have a CD drive. has 3 1/2drive. can I download, or copy from mine EI4 and outlook ex. or is this a lost cause. she can't afford to put much into this she is 80 and a widow. she has never used a computer. but I will help. thanks for advise.

[Gene C.]

as far as the memory goes you need 30 pin and if she is low on memory you will need to put something like IE3.0 on it. it dose fine for older machines with only a small amount of memory. let me know if you need more help on this!! http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000QQE http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000Y5H
also can you e-mail me with some more info on the machine

[This message has been edited by Gene C. (edited 11-26-1999).]

[scotter]

I've got a lot of 30 pin sim chips if you need a few let me know I'll send ya some for just the cost of shipping also have a few old hard drives what size is her hard drive might have one thats a little bigger

[This message has been edited by scotter (edited 11-26-1999).]

[alondra]

thanks loads guys.
her HD is 245mb. if I put in another HD which would be nice, won,t I lose 3.1 I don,t have a copy, this thing is
too small to put in win 98. it has 8 mem. slots 4 are used. how much mem does she need.

[Alzarius]

The computer prolly has four 1 meg 30 pin SIMMS. You prolly tried to put in 72 pin SIMMS. Just wanted to clear that up. A lot of folks think ALL chips are DIMMs or SIMMS. DIMMs didn't appear until the 168 pin chips. SDRAM and all that. You could prolly put in 4 more 1 meg simms OR if you are lucky, replace those 1 meg simms with 4 meg simms. Either way, you'll have 8 or more megs of ram if you add to em. a 245 meg drive is fairly dinky, even by my standards. I'm still using the original 345 Maxtor that came with the 486 that once was in this box. Technically, you could compress the drive and dump Windows 95 or 98 on it with enough memory, but I really wouldn't suggest it. 95 at the most. I did this with a drive, prolly a bit smaller than that one. But with 16 megs of memory, so...

[scotter]

ok e-mail me if you want with your addy etc etc and I'll send you some 30 pin sims got a few 2 and 4 meg chips gona have to figure out which is which lol /forum/smile.gif I'll send ya enough to get the memery up abouve 16 mabe to 32 meg /forum/smile.gifhave to see what i have left /forum/smile.gif and I have a old seagate 428meg hard drive with that you can get win98 on there or if you want i can send it with win95 installed ?it will be a little slow but it will work for what you want to do /forum/smile.gif I'll trade you all for the extra simms you have
any way let me know /forum/smile.gif
will trough in a DX2-66 chip to /forum/smile.gif


[This message has been edited by scotter (edited 11-26-1999).]

[alondra]

scotter
CYM
Al

[Ed_S]

Call some local stores for old CD drive, either used or old stock. I've gotten new 8x drives for $10, even got a 2X for "get it outta here!" Cheaper than shipping. Anyway, get one plus the stuff Scotter offered & it'll be a decent old machine. Really do need a CD, though.

I just built a 486SX2-50 as a gift to replace an XT (can you believe an XT in use today!!) and it runs '95 respectably. Loaded it from a 2X drive, too, These 486's msy seem like slow old dinosaurs to us 'puter nuts, but to a lot of people they're great. Compared to an XT, it's fast!

What about a modem? Does it have one?
Check for that along with the drive!
Only extra ISA one I've got is a 14.4 Sportster, you're welcome to it if you want, but I'm betting somebody'll offer better!! Maybe a 33.6?

Hey, it sounds like you haven't dealt with 30 pin simms before. They have to be in sets of four equal sized simms, many 486 boards had 8 simm slots which equal 2 mem banks. Usually you could use mismatched sets, like 1 set of 4mb each (16mb) and one set of 1mb each to equal 20mb total, but they MUST be installed that way, you can't use 2 4mb and 2 1mb together!

[scotter]

hey can you belive it we live about 30 miles apart lol /forum/smile.gif small world aint it lol /forum/smile.gif

[fordster]

Does 486's have pci slots because i got an 56k modem that i dont use because i am on dsl, and you are welcome to it to if it will work on it i dont know if the drivers will work either.

Just trying to lend a hand

shawn

[alondra]

Thanks Guys, the plot thickens! this board has no pci slots only isa there is a separate box, called a hayes smart modem 9600. V series, some thing tells me this is slower than snail mail. but may work. for a while. may have to get her a faster external. don't think they make modems for isa. first tho need to get the comp. up and running. that should be this weekend with scotter,s help
Al

[Ed_S]

ISA Modems were available in all speeds, you can still get 56K ones new. That's a 9600 baud modem, roughly 9.6K by today's standards. Don't even try to get on the 'net with that, IF you can get on it'll most likely take a half hour to load each page!

[alondra]

yeah, I figured the Hayes was junk. this board has 7 isa slots, two cards. 1 is vidio the other has every thing pluged in to it. nothing pluged in the MOBO, if this card dies. syanara. maybe after Norma gets the hang of it and hooked, she can talk the son into a newer mach. /forum/smile.gif

[Ed_S]

That's just the input /output (I/O) card with all the cables. If it dies, no biggee, I'll bet most folks here have a few, I know I do!
Having the I/O on the mainboard started with the socket 7 (Pentium classic) chip generation. Everything earlier had those cards & they rarely had problems.

[Alzarius]

Actually, that's not quite true. My old 486 board has all of the controllers on the board. Later, I installed a card because the UART was an ANCIENT 8250 and when I got my new 33.6 modem, it wouldn't go past, say, 9600 or 14.4 because of that old UART. Zeus knows why they put an 8250 on a 486 board.

[alondra]

scotter drove all the way over to my place, the comp. now has a 66mhz CPU a bigger HD 20MB of mem and win 95., and fordster is sending a modem for the shipping. thanks everybody.
Al.

[scotter]

Your very welcome Al glad I could help /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif hope she likes it when it's all done /forum/smile.gif
PS: feel free to ask if ya need any thing else /forum/smile.gif
Scotter /forum/smile.gif