| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 32204 | 2003-04-12 04:44:00 | I have an old 386 computer. Suggestions on what can I do with it?? | PoWa (203) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 135153 | 2003-04-12 04:44:00 | Its a quite old PC General 386, computer. I have no idea what its clock speed is though. It has a 540mb hard drive, 4xCdrom, floppy, and 8mb of ram as far as I can tell. Its running DOS and Win3.1 There are some old games I would like to get off its hard drive before I do anything to it - Doom2, Wing Commander and a few other classics. How do I get the data off the hard drive, bearing in mind they are slightly too big for a floppy disk? Secondly what can I use this computer for? A stripped down version of linux? e.g Use for a firewall, sharing a few files?? Anything?? Ideas People? Cheers, PôWâ |
PoWa (203) | ||
| 135154 | 2003-04-12 05:05:00 | > Its running DOS and Win3.1 Wow that is an old pc :D :) & win 3.1 is still around today!! Did any one know that! :p I am Not Joking > There are some old games I would like to get off its > hard drive before I do anything to it - Doom2, Wing > Commander and a few other classics. How do I get the > data off the hard drive, bearing in mind they are > slightly too big for a floppy disk? Sticking the old HDD in to your other pc & moving it that way??? What OS do you have on your other pc? > Secondly what can I use this computer for? A stripped > down version of linux? e.g Use for a firewall, > sharing a few files?? Anything?? Ideas People? Web server, file server, firewall. I do not know if it will work but that is just some ideas. |
stu140103 (137) | ||
| 135155 | 2003-04-12 06:27:00 | it will work as a linux based anything box. you probably wont get a shell/gui going.. it'll be all cli based, so start reading linux books | whetu (237) | ||
| 135156 | 2003-04-12 07:25:00 | Well, we've got 3 other computers. A Win98se soon to be, A win2000, and a XP machine. Can any of those operating systems read the data on the hard drive?? It'll be coded in dos I'm guessing. I tried putting the hard drive into my XP comp a while ago, wouldn't work...not enough power cables. Then it wouldn't even detect my proper hard drive! Pain in the neck :) I spose I could try sticking it in the 98se computer. |
PoWa (203) | ||
| 135157 | 2003-04-12 08:31:00 | I've got an old 500 MB HD in my win 98SE computer that I use to backup files on... win98 is based on dos a bit, and I'm sure XP & 2000 can read old HDs (if they are in fat32 or fat16 format anyway). | forrest44 (754) | ||
| 135158 | 2003-04-12 13:55:00 | they should be able to read the filesystem on the hdd.. all of them should be able to.. IIRC it'll be using fat16 | whetu (237) | ||
| 135159 | 2003-04-12 14:08:00 | Hi PoWa, I've successfully transferred data from two PC's using a null-modem cable connected to the serial ports of the PC's and using a little DOS utility called FastLynx (LapLink, I think, is another similar program). Not sure of the availability of the cables nowadays, and if you can get one, the parallel port version is faster, I believe. Cheers, Rod. |
Rod J (451) | ||
| 135160 | 2003-04-12 16:55:00 | Cool I'll look into that programme Rod...Umm a serial cable...is that the thing printers use to connect to a computer?? How do you set up Linux on an old computer anyway? Any Linux gurus out there? |
PoWa (203) | ||
| 135161 | 2003-04-12 23:15:00 | I read some whare what you can stick a flopy disk in the drive and then you can use yoru old computer as a switch or rutor or some network thing, you dont even need the hard drive, Its some linux thing i think. or you can give the comp to me :) |
TiM©:*) (977) | ||
| 135162 | 2003-04-13 00:46:00 | The null-modem cable is not a standard printer cable. Check out this (rather technical description) of the cable: [here] (www.nullmodem.com). You may be able to buy one from Dick Smith or similar for a few dollars. I picked one up at a computer auction some years ago. | Rod J (451) | ||
| 1 2 3 4 | |||||