Geek help needed

ckelly

Super Member
Folks

I just finished piecing together a very humble computer system for FREE :D :

P75
40 mb RAM
700 Mb HD (two 350 mb drives)
LAN
SVGA monitor

I did this using what was left from the old system - motherboard, processor, memory, case.

Today I scored an old 386, which I gutted the floppy drive, keyboard and monitor (which is in surprisingly good shape).

:cool:

I know I have a sound card somewhere around, I'll have o look.


I put the machine together, and Voilà - a small machine for free, which will go to the home network, perfect for small use: word processing, spreadsheets and internet browsing.

Now, my questions:

To get more power out of this machine, should I use linux?
if so, which distribution is best for this case?

I have never used linux, but am VERY willing to learn.

So, what do you folks think?
 
40 Mb of RAM????

Did you mean 64 Mb? Or is it 1* 32 Mb SIMM and 1* 8 Mb SIMM ... or some combo thereof?

Anyway with regards to Linux, I must admit I have NO experience whatsoever with it. The best I can say is that I have heard it is very good in the case of a file server as the file allocation process is very efficient.

So it might be good to use in the case of a MP3 "jukebox" or such like. But you've only got 700 Mb of storage which would get used up quickly.

Old PC's like that are good to use in the old home network as a physical firewall. I use an "old" PIII-500 as my firewall with 2 NIC's and share my internet connection with other PC's in the house. I just set it up with a small HDD, the OS, firewall software, and VirusScan and leave it going (that's for cable anyway - on dial-up would be a different matter - probably better to use a router).

GeniX might be able to clue you in to Linux - he's in the industry.
 
Walt

it is 40mb:

2 16 mb simms and 2 4 mb simms.

I think I can get my hands on 32 Mb and nudge it up to 64 mb.

I heard that with linux, one can really breathe nuew life into aging machines.

I plan to get more storage for it, as well as other toys. I think it's just a fun project to do, build machines that work for free :D

My idea is to browse and be able to use that machine in case the other PCs are being used.

With this it'll be the third pc in the home network, we have a hub :D

Chris
 

lol walt! yeah - im kinda in the industry. mostly i write software - computer games usually...

I also dont have much experience with linux, but only a word of warning : it is still quite far from being manageable all from a GUI like windows. Linux freaks will tell you it's like a fully functional desktop already.

I think you'll find that 'drivers' (well kernel modules and libraries and such) are not a simple click away. Neither is installing new hardware, setting up a firewall nor a lot of other things which have become almost one-click-wonders under windows.

yeah. If you really wanna learn, the common ones (with seemingly lots of documentation) are Debian and RedHat. Be prepared for lots of learning tho'

:spam:

 
Hey Genix I play a mondo amount of games what ones have you worked on or are playing?
 

For working on - we just wrapped up the single player competition game for adidas' world cup launch... and working on our company internal game when opportunity allows.

Playing - Civilization 3 (closer to civ 1 than civ 2 I reckon), love quake 3 deathmatch... :spam: gonna be playing warcraft 3 with some friends today (LAN)... yeah.
and for some reason Im interested in Never Winter Nights just because I reckon its a cool name.

You?

 
Age tells, mebbe: I have never played a computer game. Not even the Pacman way back when that was the rage.
Can't say about libraries in Chile, but we have Linux books that come with the cd-rom that contains a version of RedHat and some of the other tools.
Conspiracy buffs are claiming RedHat really wants to replace MS.
Yeah, well ...

pete
 
I am getting me a copy of Morrowind today - 200+ hours of game-time ... sounds great!
 
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