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I recently rebuilt the 486 machine you see in my CPU/RAM header.
486DX-2, 66MHz
32mb of RAM
1.7GB hard drive, 48x cd drive
SB Awe64
ISA Network cardIt currently has no OS on it, but I have a Win98SE cd around somewhere. If I installed 98SE along with IE 6.0 and hooked it up to my router, how fast would the internet run? Fast enough to be "sweet; internet on a 486!" or too slow to even bother looking for the 98SE cd?
If a 486 connected to high speed internet manages to draw up webpages faster than a 56K modem could, then I'm all for it!
I'm thinking the CPU might not be the bottleneck. The video card in there probably isn't up to a satisfying surfing experience.
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A 486 is the default minimum CPU for 98, and I think it'll be noticeable
Video Card? I don't see one listed, but hardly an issue - 32Mb RAM's gonna hurt, and 1.7Gb will fill up pretty quickly
My first internet machine was something like that - but running Win95A (& crappy dialup)
98Lite might be a consideration, as well as some discretion as to what applications are installed (like that 'slimware' IE6)
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock
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Yeah, you'd need to check the requirements for the hardware and software you intend to use. I doubt your network card is a 10/100 and I'm not sure it'll accomodate a 'high speed' connection. 98 will run OK and maybe IE 6. A 56K modem and IE 5.5 will work.
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The video is onboard. There's a chip made by S3 near the monitor port, with what looks like memory chips surrounding it. I'm guessing that it's a local-bus solution with 1-2mb of video memory, though I don't know for sure.
The network card is a D-Link from 1997, and it has two LEDs on it, which leads me to believe that it's a 10/100. Of course having 2 LEDs may have nothing to do with speed. :P I've never had this PC connected to any network/internet before, so I don't know network card specifics.
My old P2-266 uses 72-pin memory just like this 486 does. I'll probably steal 32MB from the P2 (which currently has 192MB) and install it in the 486 for a total of 64mb.
1.7GB probably will fill up fast, but hey, caching Internet files is what the bigger drive on the badder AMD is for. :P
I will definitely take a look at 98Lite.
You think that I could stream music off the file server and run it skip free? Or is that wistful thinking?Thanks all for helping.
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If you want to use a 486 for anything more than surf the intermet and write word docs, you will be plenty disappointed....
Yes it will surf fine just expect up to 60secs to render high graphical web pages..
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Depends on how well your NIC performs - it's all ISA bus speeds, maybe even the onboard video too. Maybe see if you can enable DMA on the hard drive
No matter what though, it's a 486 - even an early 66MHz Pentium would outperform it at every turn
64Mb will make a difference in machine performance, sure - it won't have to start swapping to the hard drive right off the bat - altough launching IE6 should suck up any remaining free memory (and then some)
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock
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Possibly the 486 won't recognize that much RAM. You'll just have to try it and see.
Also I've run across a few of the later 486's that would see a HD that large but most of those old bios' wouldn't go above 500 meg. If it doesn't see it right you'll need to install a drive overlay.
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Folk are tossing computers in skips with far superior specs. I'd keep my eyes skinned for one - that 486 is gonna be real slow.
DerekW
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In my experience, even a Pentium 133 with quadruple your current RAM is too slow to be running 98SE at an acceptable speed. As previously mentioned, 98lite is one route to try, although the original Windows 95 would run better if you have that available.
As for browsers, Firefox and IE would both be painfully slow on those specs, regardless of which versions you use. Stick with Opera if you want a full-featured browser that isn't a resource-hog. Version 6 runs fairly well on those specs, but Opera 7+ will certainly be slower (but still faster than IE or Firefox.) The Off By One browser is the lightest graphical browser out there, and will even outperform Opera, but at a cost of features like Javascript, etc. Older versions of Netscape may also be worth a shot (3.x or 4.x). Better yet, try them all out and see which works best for you.
If you can live with Netscape versions up to 4.08, Opera up to 3.62, and IE up to 5.0, then Windows for Workgroups 3.11 would be the best choice for Internet browsing, given the specs. Obviously you'll sacrifice the ability to run most 32-bit apps, but WfW 3.11 can take advantage of high-speed Internet surfing.
To sum up, yes, a 486 with high-speed Internet can surf faster than modern processors that are on dial-up, but you'll have to limit your browser and OS selections to something more suitable to a 486.
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Indeed - there are better crappy computers to work with
I've got a few 486DX4's (100 - 120MHz) with PCI & DIMM slots that I've been meaning to do something with - but probably won't, since I've even more disposable Pentium I & II systems
For sure, that one might not take more RAM, and you may hit that old (~500Mb) BIOS hard drive limit - if so, preparing the drive on another machine might get you around that one
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock
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jboy is right as far as the IE6 sucking up any remaining RAM.
IE 6 is incredibly slow compared to 5.5 and offers no real benefit over 5.5 IMHO. I would recommended IE 5.5 Service Pack 2, last version released for Windows 95.
Microsoft no longer offers this for download. If you'd like it I can email it (but it is ~100MB so I hope you have high-speed.)
Stephen Fox
Windows 2000 5.00.2195 SP4
PENTIUM II 450MHz; 384MB RAM
GATEWAY 2000 P6-450 DESKTOP 80GB
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The hard drive uses a Scuzzy (lol) interface, so there won't (or shouldn't) be any 500mb limitation.
Glitchman:I don't have a Windows 3.1 disk, so that's not an option. However, Opera definitely sounds like a good alternative to IE. Thanks, I'll definitely give it a shot. The only OS disks I have are Win 98SE, Windows NT 4.0, Win XP Pro, and VistaRC1 (I'd love to see this 486 try and run that).
Next question: would Windows NT 4.0 be better on a 486 than 98SE, or would the fact that it's NT-based choke it up?
jboy: the mobo can take a maximum of 128mb (32x4), but I'm not sure if the chipset (which I can't seem to locate on the board, unless that S3 chip is a chipset with a built in VGA core) will cache that amount of RAM. I guess I'll run memtest to find out, later on. Also that's very interesting about your 486 boards with DIMM slots--never would have see one like that before. Would they take PC133 memory and just downclock it?
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Linux is feasible
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
NT4 fully patched is around I believe 700MB and if you can live without Plug'n'Pray then yes NT4 is an interesting alternative. A very good learning tool for NT Command Prompt and NTVDM which also in W2K, XP, W2K3 and Vista, though NTVDM is not in 64bit O/S versions.
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My 486/80Mhz laptop with 16MB of RAM, Win 95A runs OK on the Internet when hooked up through our network using the other computer as a Proxy server. The 14.4 modem is pretty slow on the rare occasions that I have used dialup to get that puppy on the Internet.
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In answer to #12 - yeah, those were late model 486's - I confess, I haven't looked at them in some time - definitely equipped with PCI slots, and I think they could take DIMMs. If so, I doubt if anything higher than PC66 would work.
Could have used them ten years ago (of course, back then, they would have actually been worth something). These days, I've got fancier toys and a lot of 'projects' got relegated out to storage
Uncached RAM is still faster than swapping to disk - I wouldn't worry about chipset drivers, but "unless that S3 chip is a chipset with a built in VGA core" - - well, no(?), it's just a pretty standard (S)VGA display
In response to:
"Microsoft no longer offers this for download"
Don't fret about that - regulars here are well aware of the Evolt browser archive (now you are too)
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock
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I got it up and running tonight :) After the initial battle with the Scuzzy card, everything went quite smoothly.
64MB of RAM (and memtest says its cached), and the 1.7gb disk is being read as a 1.7gb disk. :)So far, I've got 98SE and IE 5.5. Tomorrow, I'll install 98Lite and the Opera browser.
The video card allows 1024x768 @ 16-bit color, so nothing's looking too ugly.
The internet on a 486! Cool! Some stuff that I saw on my first adventure:
Scrolling gets so slow that it's nearly unusable whenever there's a Flash ad on the page (and sometimes it even gives me an 'Illegal Operation' notice).
Also, download speeds are slower (around 48KB/sec max, while the other computers download at around 530KB/sec.) Probably a limitation of the ISA bus (though I would've thought that an 8MB/sec ISA bus could handle more than 48KB/sec). Perhaps the onboard video is ISA-based and using all of the bandwidth?
Streaming music off the file server is impossible. MP3s at 192KB/sec are too hard on it, but I was expecting that before. :P
No matter how small I resize the IE window, Google Video won't play any faster than around 1 frame per minute. Literally. But I was expecting this also. :)
But simpler websites (such as Computing.net) load at reasonable speeds. Around 20 seconds for this thread to load completely. That's OK for a PC of this vintage.
Unlike Win XP, there's no CPU usage meter when alt+ctrl+del is pressed. I would've liked to monitor CPU usage during the entire first test run.
A photography site (flickr) was unbearably slow on this machine. :(
All in all, a very interesting experience! If I have the time tomorrow, I'll play some more with it and install 98Lite+Opera browser.
Thanks for all of the help and advice you guys have given me!
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Sounds about what I would have expected. Thx for taking the trouble to pop back and update us. Good luck with W98 Lite + Opera.
DerekW
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Now that NT and Linux have been mentioned since my initial post, you may consider dual- or triple-booting into those OSes to compare performance, especially since you have now doubled the RAM. The smoothest web browsing combination on a 486 with 64 MB of RAM is, IMO, Windows NT 3.51 SP5 + The Off By One browser. Of course that combo is even better still on an early Pentium if the option is available....
You may also consider Puppy Linux as well. Try the live CD, but I suspect you can't boot directly from the CD without the aid of a floppy.
Still another option is the QNX demo disk, which is still floating around the web somewhere. It contains its own web browser and loads completely from one floppy disk. No installation needed. No hard drive needed either!
Nothing beats Off By One on Windows or Dillo on Linux for browsing forums like computing.net... well, except perhaps Lynx or eLinks. ;) You'll get the most out of Opera once you have the UI tweaked to your liking.
As far as Win 9x task managers go, consider the small, but powerful Another Task Manager (under 56 kB!) Any dedicated NT4 / 2K / XP user will appreciate this on 9x.
Hope that wasn't too many options. :)
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486 66mhz i had ran good for my emrgency with 95 (plsyed a couple games of naval command on yahoo so it passed my test)will probaly run ok to the only thing that will hurt it is the macromedia flash if you do some surfing you should be ok .
if it wont install just /nm i believe it will let you thenalso my pci nvidia 5500 helped it out alot than without it
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ahhh to teh surfing speeds a 486 will succesfully do a standard 4.8kbps with 56k and sure it will go highspeed to but then again it probaly wont run teh files you download.
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last time i post sorry but my 486 really surprised me and wondering why i got another comp
gateway 2000
widows95 version b
80gig hd
samsung cd rw
3pci 1 isa
16mb ram
66mhz pentium
nvidia geforce 5500
usr 56k v.90 ( auto disconnect on modem 150mb avg over night)
use wav over mp3 you can listing to mp3 but if you move a window around it will stall it"mite go back to wirte a cd just to confirm that it can but i dint try it just emergenvy
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also last note be careful against the overclocking temptation . these computers are not as advance as todays but they are built better long after your 3.?ghz mother board is dead a 486 will still be going
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Hi.
I use 17 pc -s at home.
My 486dx2/66 with 16 ram works just fine to surf the net with win95 and OffbyOne browser is the BEST.
I bought this pc for 10 bucks in hungary and using gprs with my mobilphone....no need for better pc for me in 2007!
My PI with 32 ram with debian just great too.
Lowand Rulez!!!
I am surfing over 5 years and spend no more then 50 bucks alltogether for hardvare and 0 bucks for software.Laughing on people spending thousands...
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