Found old pc, any ideas?

So I was throwing out the trash and I threw a bag of trash over the doors of the corral and I missed the trash bin. I went inside the corral and found an old keyboard on the floor and I thought ka-ching. I had just found an old pc. Everything was there. To get to my question.

What can I do with this system. Any ideas?

It runs but I think it has some problem with the hard drive or ide controller or something. I opened it up and it seems to be an old 486 box. Im not sure but I think all the devices were connected via isa as opposed to more modern systems that use pci slots. The ports didnt look like the pci slots im used to seeing so I'm just going on a hunch. It has 16 megs and no cd rom, but one 3.5" floppy and a 5" floppy. When I opened the box I saw the hd and it said the capacity was 240 megs or something. I was laughing but I was like ok i guess its right, the American Megatrends Bios says 1985 - 1992. So Im guessing windows 3.0 or something. The mobo has no ide controller built in, the ide conrtoller is a separate device. The HD's ide cable is pluged in to this device that is connected to the mobo through isa or whatever kind of port that is.

here are some pics.

ps. It wont boot to the OS. Hard drive not ready error.

 

Try downloading a bootdisk from the link below. I would get the windows 95 Original. Download it to your computer and then put a blank 1.44 mb 3.5 disk in and open the download and it will make a bootdisk to try. From there you can try the boot that one and check to see if the hard drive (cis working. If it boots to a:> then type in dir c: and hit enter. If the drive is working you should get a list of files. It is a good chance it has windows 95 on it.

http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

 

maybe you could run linux on it. depending on system specs. or just take the hd put it in your comp depending on size you could use it to back up files or put linux on it.

 

You could use it as a print server or install an ethernet card and use it as a router...

 

Ok good ideas there. First things first. I booted with the a drive the floppy that had the boot disk for win95 and it said starting windows 95 at first but then it gave me an error. It said "no drives found, installation aborted". Then it says device name "banana" device driver not found for "banana" "no valid cd rom device drivers selected. and thats it. How can I get it to boot, should I install a cd rom drive? I happen to have one lying around.

 

Any help?

 

At the A:> type in dir c:

And see if it shows anything...


You could try a CD-ROM drive in it, don't know if it would see it...

If you do, make sure in the BIOS that the channel is set to "Auto"...

 

You could use it as an Atari Emulator . Perhaps if you max out the ram you may even by able to run a couple of Nintendo Emulators

 

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how would one go about using it as a router? what software do you need?

 

What you need to do is find an old 4Xcdrom someplace. This is the one place I would suggest looking at eBay. It is doubtful that you could run any faster cdrom on that. I have several small IDE hard drives sitting here. Even a 750Mb I believe. If you would be willing to pay the shipping I would give it to you. Sorry cant help with a cdrom though.

 

Hehe that looks like my place with all the computer parts n stuff, try n put win 95 on it. Or use it as a boat anchor.lol

 

Linux...router...ROM-rocker...target practice...whatever...

 

try running scandisk

 

Lol yeah, I tried scandisk and I also tried dir c: but it wont work. I remember at first it was telling something about ide controller problem or soemthing. I think that my first step is to get the ide device working maybe switching it from port to port then accessing the HD so I can later maybe install whatever on it. The bios has a password If I take out the batery for a while will that reset it? Or should I mess with the master reset jumpers? Thats a bad idea the other computer in one of those pictures has its jumpers all moved so thats why I cant get it to work.

Could someone give me some linux distributions for floppy's (with GUI's) in case I cant get that cd rom to work.