Win98 running on 486 w/ 16MB ram

[Chainsaw]

Score!
The place I work just got new owners so they've been going through everything and piled up a bunch of old equipment. They said "have at", so I grabbed 2 old ALR VEISA DX2 66MHz 486's each with 16 MB ram, a bunch of Network cards, cables, adaptors, x-tra cpu card, mice, Hard Drives, a monitor, heatsinks, and a bunch of other assorted stuff, all for free.
I messed around with getting one configured for about a day and finally got the 1.2 GB HD formatted then tried putting Win95 on one. It was only a Win95 upgrade CD, so I first had to install Dos, Win3.1 ... well, I got to the point where Win95 finally comes the last re-boot and it comes up with the ol' blue screen and no matter what I do will not finish! *(%##+)
So I said, "heck with it", and tried Win98, even though the requirements are for a minimum of 24 MB Ram.

Loaded right up and has been working beautiful ever since. No blue screens, no problems at all, other than being a "tad" bit slower than my PIII450@558.

Next mission, Networking ...

Oh yea, one of the ALR's has an expansion memory card (8x 4MB Simms = 32MB + 16MB onboard =48MB total), but I can't get it to recognize the card. I have an EISA BIOS disk, but can't find the expansion card listed in the various lists of add-on cards.
Any help on getting the extra memory card working would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
c:::CHNsaw

[Missing the point]

you luckey don of a $%^%@

hehe.......


You scored pretty good there

[cariocaokay]

i used to run windows 95 on a 386sx20 with 4mb ram. LOL

[zskillz]

I have an anciet 486 DX2 with 8MB ram, and i have win98SE installed using a program called 98lite...
it's quite impressive, but I've decided that's is slow as **** and it's a waste of space, so I'm gonna try and put Linux on it and learn some of that
Z
... i posted this msg in another thread, but i had it in the clipboard and since it still applied, what the heck!?!

[narayan]

Good score, you lucky dog. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Eli]

I have a 486DX2/66 with 16 megs running W95 behind me now. God it's painfully slow... Surprisingly, it wasn't much worse before I upgraded to the 66 chip from the old 33...

[Chainsaw]

Actually I do feel pretty lucky to get the stuff, if only to learn something about networking and to have the fun of making something old work better than it ever has.
I got my network hooked up and got all my drives mapped, quite a few re-boots till I got the basics worked out. The printer is working on both now, but need to figure out sharing the internet.
I began working on the second ALR, but can't seem to get anything going on it as yet, can't even get into the BIOS for some reason, but I'm sure I'll figure it out sooner or later.
Thanks for the feedback, it's nice to know there are others out there still messing around with 486's, just because they haven't died yet, or have been brought back to life. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Later all,
c:::CHNsaw

[orkboss]

BeforemI got my new motherboard CPU and RAM (cheaply it's a Cyrix PRII 333, gigavyte 5AA and 32Mb RAm- now 64,) I used to run win98 on a 486 with 16Mb of RAM. It ran all right and I didn't realise how slow it was until I got my new processor.

But it was stable.

I played lots of DoS based games.

[Eli]

I didn't mean to try and discourage you from trying, I was just saying that they're not the best W95 machines. W3.x would run just great. In fact, my parents just bought a bunch of older computer stuff in a garage sale with a pair of 486 motherboards included, as well as a 386 board, and all three booted up on the first try. The 486s might make nice Doom machines... http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Chainsaw]

I certainly didn't take your post as negitive, I too have a need for speed, I like to be on the cutting edge when I can afford it, but I've always kind of missed my ol' 486 that died before I upgraded, so perhaps these cast out bits and pieces can help me fill that void. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif
Later,
c:::CHNsaw