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What to do with a (slightly) old Intel PC?

Author	Topic
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 18:36:58 Hey there, folks! My sister is giving me her old Acer PC, with the only condition being that I figure out how to recover her old files before I start tinkering with it. Anyway, if I remember right, it's a Pentium 200mmx, with 96 megs of RAM, a 4 (or maybe 6) gig hard drive, CD-ROM, screen, etc. Just your basic PC. Anyway, a guy from another forum was kind enough to send me some CDs with BeOS 5 personal and Pro (I think), which I figure will run on this box. Any other cool OS's I should check out? Can I run OpenSTEP on it? How 'bout NeXTstep? Err, are those last two the same thing? As you can prob tell, I don't know much about alternate OS's for PCs, so any ideas would be cool. My only criteria is that it not be Windows, which I would never inflict on myself or innocent hardware! Anyway, any good ideas would be cool. I should be getting the system in the next couple of days, so I've got a little time... Thanks! SpaceBoy AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
bigsadhu Junior Member Cayman Island 462 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 18:42:10 Lets see... Sounds like it would make a perfect boat anchor.... or you could hollow out the innards and drill a hole inthe side to make a bird-house. Cheers! CC Current score: 1 eMate 300 1 Apple //e 2 LC IIs 1 LC III 1 LC 475 1 Quadra 605 1 Quadra 700 1 Quadra 800 1 PB 520c 2 Powermac 6100s 1 PowerComputing Powerbase 240 1 Wallstreet
scchicago Full Member USA 936 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 18:47:19 Run Linux or BeOS and emulate a Macintosh on it! _________________ HotLineServer: scchicago.dynodns.net Website: http://scchicago.dynodns.net MyForumOnDelphi: http://forums.delphiforums.com/scchicago NOTE:HL AND HTTP SERVER ARE ONLY AVAILIBLE WHEN I'M ONLINE AIM:scchicago87 Yahoo!IM:scchicago
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 18:50:08 quote: Sounds like it would make a perfect boat anchor.... or you could hollow out the innards and drill a hole inthe side to make a bird-house. nah, if it hasn't got an agp slot, get dual Voodoo 2's and a pile of old glide (prehistoric video acceleration that's still better than any flight sim stuff on the mac! it's pathetic!) titles and do the silk scarf thing! jt ™. .
QuadraJets Junior Member USA 344 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 19:53:33 Shoot it with a potato gun (a 20oz bottle as a projectile) for a wonderful show of flying plastic and metal I did this to a 486 peecee....check it out at http://www.quadrajets.dns2go.com/pcbitesthedust.html Quicktime movies too! Macdaddy's younger sibling... 68k Macs liberated : LCIII+ LCII Performa 410 IIci Quadra 700 Quadra 800 Performa 550 Other macs: Beige G3/300 tower 6100
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 19:53:57 Well, so far, so good! I've heard that there were versions of Copeland/Rhapsody that ran on intel hardware- are these available? Or merely myths? Hmmm... As fo Linux, I'm both interested in trying and scared of the command prompt. I messed around with the terminal app (in OS X) last night, at it frightened me! So maybe Linus ain't the best way to go... Thanks, SpaceBoy AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
Wonkothesane Full Member USA 506 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 19:59:03 I recommend running some flavor of Unix. I have two pentium boxes of my own and will install Linux on one (probably Slackware) and OpenStep on the other after finals/Regents/APs. Wonko The Sane Engineer-in-training 3 Macs Liberated "You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool."- Wonko The Sane
TiMacLover Senior Member USA 1282 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 20:05:25 Sell it to me or trade me a mac for it iNeed one for a friend Jeremy "I'll see you on the Dark Side Of The Moon" - Pink Floyd Covert Ops 68k Hacks General Macs Liberated:17 ENTER THROUGH THE GATES
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 20:13:44 Well, TiMac, that's a bit outside of the range of ideas I was looking for... but still interesting! What've you got to trade? Thanks, SpaceBoy <wishing he too had a potato cannon> AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
QuadraJets Junior Member USA 344 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 20:16:46 quote: <wishing he too had a potato cannon> I have 4 of them right now, 2 compressed air, and 2 combustion Macdaddy's younger sibling... 68k Macs liberated : LCIII+ LCII Performa 410 IIci Quadra 700 Quadra 800 Performa 550 Other macs: Beige G3/300 tower 6100
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 20:20:49 Wow Bob, wow! (<-- obscure Tv quote- guess which show and get a shiny new penny!) A kid down the road from me (years ago in California) had built a potato launcher- his was really big, at least 10 or 12 feet long, and used some sort of explosive for the charge. We gauged some of the better launches at over half a mile! Man, that was fun! What OS do your launchers use? I'd guess potato/pahtato, the *NIX for launchers! :-) SpaceBoy AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
QuadraJets Junior Member USA 344 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 20:33:30 The one I shot the peecee with now has several 10 foot barrels, a 6-foot, 4" diameter air chamber, and a 1 1/2 inch ball valve for firing. The operating system is very mechanical....its more archaic than a command line. It consists of bungee cords (CPU access), plunger solonoids (output devices) weedwacker string (system bus control) , a cordless drill battery (RAM) , a few relays (kernel), a light switch for the safety (protected memory) and a trigger button with a 20ft length of 2 conductor wire on it. (input device) Weapons engineering division, 68kMLA 68k Macs liberated : LCIII+ LCII Performa 410 IIci Quadra 700 Quadra 800 Performa 550 Other macs: Beige G3/300 tower 6100
FireWire is fast General, 4 star USA 1559 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 21:14:37 quote: Any other cool OS's I should check out? Can I run OpenSTEP on it? How 'bout NeXTstep? You should be able to run OPENSTEP on it. Check out this thread I don't know much about Linux and the like, but you may be able to get a Red Hat Linux distribution (if the newest version isn't compatible, perhaps an older distro) to run on it. -------------------- keeper of the website and beholder of the Quadra/Centris Stick of Justice™ --------------------
TiMacLover Senior Member USA 1282 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 22:42:43 For under $100 make it a wireless router. Jeremy "I'll see you on the Dark Side Of The Moon" - Pink Floyd Covert Ops 68k Hacks General Macs Liberated:17 ENTER THROUGH THE GATES
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 04 May 2002 : 23:39:12 Hey, that's not a bad idea! I'm also thinking about partitioning the hard drive and installing several OS's on it, like the one's I've already mentioned. Have any of you used BeOS on Intel? I will never rest until I own my own multi-processor BeBox, but until then, the old Acer will have to do... Thanks again, folks! SpaceBoy PS There were USB CD-RW writers at the Goodwill today for only $30! Well, they were $120, but the store was having a "half off everything sale", and I have a "half off final checkout price" coupon. I was going to buy one (or both...), but they said that they weren't Mac compatible. I'm starting to think that maybe I should'a bought 'em anyway..... DOH! AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
raWr Junior Member Tuvalu 491 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 02:29:18 Install Linux and run Apache. Server powa! -raWr Fleet Covert Ops
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 11:02:09 Well, I've got plenty of more worthy hardware waiting for a broadband connection to be webservers- like my Quadra 950 and my iMac 333, so turning the Acer into a webserver is kinda not on my list of thing to try with it. I'm thinking about upgrading the Acer's hard drive (really big drives are really cheap these days) and using it as some sort of MP3 jukebox. Does the BeOS do MP3's? I'd imagine so, with all the hype about it being the OS for video/music, etc. How many Be users are here? Thanks, SpaceBoy PS Ti- I'm still wondering what you might have to trade... AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
Kady Mae Junior Member USA 261 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 11:58:58 Despite all the snarking aside, this is still a useful box for office productivity and websurfing. I picked up a Pentium Pro 200 not too long ago, and "Goatboy" has been a good deal, despite the fact that I have not been able to devote all the time I wanted to him. If you have an agp slot on the mobo, you might want to get an ATI TV wonder card (don't go with the All In Wonder -- you just don't have the processor for good capture) and you can watch TV on your PC. If not, there are several decent PCI video cards you can pick up on eBay. Goatboy currently has a "big ass" 8 gig Scsi-2 drive in him, running off of an adaptec card. (Note: if you try to initialize this drive using a W9x boot floppy, you will get a divide overflow error. The drive must be formatted using a DOS 6.22 disk. E-mail me for details on how to conquer the "great divide") [The fact that I had to chop my disk into a series of 2 gig partitions actually worked to my advantage when setting "Goatboy" up as a dual boot system.] Currently Goatboy boots into W98 or Corel Linux 2. (Corel Linux is a discontinued distro which I picked up with its 700+ page guide for $7 in the remainder bin of a book store. It's been a good way to dip my toe into Linux.) I have BeOS personal edition 5 installed w/in the W98 partition. (I only boot into W98 on this machine to boot into BeOS.) You also might want to go to www.getqnx.com and download the qnx demo. It fits on a floppy and is the world's coolest emergency boot disk. The most useful feature is w/in the 1.44mb of the file, you get a Browser and TCP/IP. If you've hosed some essential file and need to get on-line to read how to fix it, the QNX boot disk is worth its weight in gold. Good Luck and have fun. 68K's liberated: 0 68Ks adopted to loving homes: 2 PowerMacs adopted: 1
danamania Official 68k Muse Australia 1193 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 12:05:42 quote: Hey there, folks! My sister is giving me her old Acer PC, with the only condition being that I figure out how to recover her old files before I start tinkering with it. Anyway, if I remember right, it's a Pentium 200mmx, with 96 megs of RAM, a 4 (or maybe 6) gig hard drive, CD-ROM, screen, etc. Just your basic PC. I say just -play- with it. do the BeOS thing, the linux thing, the... well, anything else you can find. the HD is way big enough for most of the more eclectic OS's about, you could likely fit about a dozen of them on there if you REALLY wanted. For a well-supported Linux box, I'd say it would do the job very well, if thats part of what you're interested in. dana -- http://www.danamania.com/ naturally hosted on a Quadra 605 --
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 13:03:37 First choice: OpenStep. OpenStep is just Apple's release of NeXTSTEP with additional APIs; OpenStep has more drivers and runs better on x86 hardware. Has a ton of software, much of which is commercial software that's been abandoned (see http://www.peak.org/~luomat/ for a list). With OmniWeb, it makes a great web design platform. I've had my OpenStep box for a couple weeks and I love it! It's like OS X without Aqua - PERFECTION! Second choice: BeOS. The "real thing" will cost you, but it's got some good software and it runs fast. Really fast. BeOS is unsupported (I think), but you can still download the Personal Edition (runs in Win95 partition, 500 MB space max in virtual drive). Third choice: QNX. Installs in the Win95 partition, doesn't cost anything, runs fast, very stable, and has a reasonable amount of software. AbiWord and GIMP will run on QNX. Fourth choice: Linux. Slow, bloated, large, and lacking in terms of interface. If you're going to try it, use Mandrake. You can probably live with other distributions, but for Mac people, Mandrake is easiest to learn and install. Comes with many programs, but nothing seems as professional as can be found on OpenStep, BeOS, or QNX. You'll end up using the command line (gasp!) more than with any other OS. Other people have told me to go with FreeBSD on x86, but I haven't tried it. Fifth choice: Windows 95 B (Micro$oft's least bloated OS to date). I hate to say this, but if you don't install too much crap on it, this doesn't suck near as much as what's come after it. Install a good graphics card and soundcard and play Combat Flight Simulator. Sixth choice: Oberon. It's really lacking in software, but it has some cool ideas with the GUI. Fun to play around with. Macs Liberated: SE, IIsi, Quadra 700, 6100, PB 5300, PowerMac 5400 PCs liberated from Windows: 3
TiMacLover Senior Member USA 1282 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 13:20:29 If you upgrade the HD, would you be interesting in selling the old one? Jeremy "I'll see you on the Dark Side Of The Moon" - Pink Floyd Covert Ops 68k Hacks General Macs Liberated:17 ENTER THROUGH THE GATES
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 05 May 2002 : 20:27:21 Wow, guys (and gals!), thanks for all the amazing info/tips! What would I do without you all?! Thanks, SpaceBoy <wipes tear from eye> AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
scchicago Full Member USA 936 Posts	Posted - 06 May 2002 : 16:26:47 The personal edition of BeOS WILL INSTALL INTO ITS OWN PARTITION! All you need to do is either get the hacked CD of BeOS 5 Personal. OR you can just install the personal edition onto your Windows partition and boot to BeOS from there. Then from the BeOS menu there is an installer. Install it onto a partition of your choice, and now you have a BOOTABLE BeOS Personal partition! You can also get rid of the BeOS install on Windows after this. _________________ HotLineServer: scchicago.dynodns.net Website: http://scchicago.dynodns.net MyForumOnDelphi: http://forums.delphiforums.com/scchicago NOTE:HL AND HTTP SERVER ARE ONLY AVAILIBLE WHEN I'M ONLINE AIM:scchicago87 Yahoo!IM:scchicago
SpaceBoy Full Member USA 631 Posts	Posted - 06 May 2002 : 17:31:43 Wow! That's a great tip! Thanks! SpaceBoy AppleBASIC FOREVER! As of 4/8/02: TiBook G4/500, "Difference Engine" PB 1400/133, "KayPro II" PB 180/33, "Osbourne 1" PMac 7100/G3-266, "DEC Rainbow" and "Altair 8800" Quadra 950, "HAL 9000" iMac Rev.A/333mHz, "Deep Blue" Newton 120, "PADD"
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 10 May 2002 : 04:56:56 quote: Fifth choice: Windows 95 B (Micro$oft's least bloated OS to date). I hate to say this, but if you don't install too much crap on it, this doesn't suck near as much as what's come after it. Install a good graphics card and soundcard and play Combat Flight Simulator. Yeah. My favourite version of Windohze, other than NT and beloved Win2k. Stay the hell away from Windohze 98 and Win98SE. I've found both to be crash city, and have had to do reinstalls for friends many more times than i can count. -------------------------- Pizzabox LCs RULE!!!!!!! Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 10 May 2002 : 05:18:13 quote: quote: Fifth choice: Windows 95 B (Micro$oft's least bloated OS to date). I hate to say this, but if you don't install too much crap on it, this doesn't suck near as much as what's come after it. Install a good graphics card and soundcard and play Combat Flight Simulator. Yeah. My favourite version of Windohze, other than NT and beloved Win2k. Stay the hell away from Windohze 98 and Win98SE. I've found both to be crash city, and have had to do reinstalls for friends many more times than i can count. that's strange, i've fopund '98 to be solid as a rock on the K-6 box! then again, the only other rev's i' ever run were 3.0 and 3.1! jt ™. .
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 10 May 2002 : 05:36:35 quote: quote: quote: Fifth choice: Windows 95 B (Micro$oft's least bloated OS to date). I hate to say this, but if you don't install too much crap on it, this doesn't suck near as much as what's come after it. Install a good graphics card and soundcard and play Combat Flight Simulator. Yeah. My favourite version of Windohze, other than NT and beloved Win2k. Stay the hell away from Windohze 98 and Win98SE. I've found both to be crash city, and have had to do reinstalls for friends many more times than i can count. that's strange, i've fopund '98 to be solid as a rock on the K-6 box! then again, the only other rev's i' ever run were 3.0 and 3.1! jt ™. . that might explain it... -------------------------- Pizzabox LCs RULE!!!!!!! Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 10 May 2002 : 05:39:33 quote: that might explain it... gosh! ya think so!?! jt ™. .

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