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I have a bunch of old 486 parts laying around in my closet, so I brought them out to look at them. Jeez, they must have been there for 7+ years LOL. The mobo supports 30 pin and 72 pin simms, with a total ram capacity of 128 megs. I'm only missing a floppy cable, but I'm wonding what could I do with this old rig if I get it running?

Satellite Emulator

Linux firewall.

Donate to Museum? j/k (or am I? Could probably donate it to someplace and claim it as a tax write-off)

Just to add to Radboys idea:
Using Linux for cable/DSL-router, firewall, DHCP for internal network, it has more than enough RAM for a GUI desktop though running KDE or Gnome could be frustrating on a 486, better use a leaner window manager ... maybe to store Ghost images ... MP3 server ... just some ideas ...

a door stop?

an anchor

you should maybe make it a server live everyone else is saying, it would also be great for playing lan games with games like Doom and warcraft1-2 what sorta buses does it have? PCI ISA VESA-localbus???
trident made a mean VESA-LOCALBUS card at one point, ive got one in my closet ive got a old 386 compaq, got it for free yesterday im not sure what imgoing to do with it, it only has 16Bit ISA's 4 of em, i may try to get it to network with my other computers, have 500MB of extra space!!!!

A good 486 is still usful, give it a good ISA hardware modem, use it on the net. type up stuff, do graphics.

good luck with it, and enjoy it!

Don't trash it...the old 486 is still useful for tons of stuff! Until the RAM prices come down, my old DX2/66 Overdrive is my main machine. It has 8 megs of RAM, a 1.2 gig hard drive, 2 slow CD ROMs and runs Windows 95. I use this for web design, basic graphics manipulation through an old copy of Paint Shop Pro, and also use it for old games. You should see how Doom 2 runs on it!

Also, if you know someone that needs a word processor, chuck a copy of Win 95 and Word 97 on it, and that'll keep them quite happy. I run Word 97 on my 486, and its really nice on the old machine. So although its old, the machine is very useful. And, if all else fails, stick 2 CD ROM drives in it and hook it to the stereo for a CD player! Be warned though, it won't play firendly with MP3s. I once tried running WinAmp on mine and it skipped like crazy.

donate it to a school or something and claim its worth $1000

Well, after sitting in my closet for 6-7 years, the mobo still works! It booted right up with no problems, and even the date still works. I thought for sure that the Y2K bug would show on this old bios dated 1994, but I entered in the correct date and time, and it's still working.

I also found a pc surplus store locally, and got some 4 meg 30 pin simms, and a couple of 16 meg 72 pin simms. So now it's got a total of 64 megs running Win95b (OSR2.1). I installed Office 97 and it works with no problems. I also have an old 32x IDE CD-ROM reader there as well with an old Promise VLB controller card. My brother gave me his old Packerd Bell 15" monitor and I found an old ISA 28.8 modem that I threw in. So it's got:

Intel 486-66DX2 cpu
4.2 gig Maxtor IDE hard drive
Promise VLB controller
Cirrus Logic 1meg VLB video card
28.8 modem
MS Serial Mouse
Packard Bell 15" Monitor
3½" and 5¼" combo floppy drive
Creative 32x IDE CD-ROM reader
64 megs of total ram
Keyboard
AWE32 ISA Sound Card with 8 megs of ram
Speakers
Win95b

If I was to sell this at a garage sale, what could I expect to get for it? I was thinking about $125 for the whole thing.

What Y2K bug? Wasn't that pretty much proven to be a hoax, at least for PCs (those made not too long ago)? I'm surprized that no one went after those people who made a buttload of $$$ selling the need to do anything about it.

The Y2K bug wouldn't cause a crash but would see the year was 1900 and not 2000, right?

The idea was for 2 digit date computers from (basically) the 70's from my recollection. Those computers didn't know what century it was (no 19) so it wasn't exactly logical to me. The #s went from 99 to 00 and obviously wasn't a real problem.
If I'm wrong here, did anyone ever hear of one older computer (not upgraded for Y2K) that failed during that moment?

Originally posted by Executioner
Well, after sitting in my closet for 6-7 years, the mobo still works! It booted right up with no problems, and even the date still works. I thought for sure that the Y2K bug would show on this old bios dated 1994, but I entered in the correct date and time, and it's still working.

I also found a pc surplus store locally, and got some 4 meg 30 pin simms, and a couple of 16 meg 72 pin simms. So now it's got a total of 64 megs running Win95b (OSR2.1). I installed Office 97 and it works with no problems. I also have an old 32x IDE CD-ROM reader there as well with an old Promise VLB controller card. My brother gave me his old Packerd Bell 15" monitor and I found an old ISA 28.8 modem that I threw in. So it's got:

Intel 486-66DX2 cpu
4.2 gig Maxtor IDE hard drive
Promise VLB controller
Cirrus Logic 1meg VLB video card
28.8 modem
MS Serial Mouse
Packard Bell 15" Monitor
3½" and 5¼" combo floppy drive
Creative 32x IDE CD-ROM reader
64 megs of total ram
Keyboard
AWE32 ISA Sound Card with 8 megs of ram
Speakers
Win95b

If I was to sell this at a garage sale, what could I expect to get for it? I was thinking about $125 for the whole thing.

Very similar setup to my first real computer..... I got $125 for it... it stil runs great to this day I'm told.... just make sure that you sell it to a n00b..... they will think you are god when they get a "computer" for 125 bucks.....wow, all the ads on tv are for lik 799, we got a deal on this one!...

j/k

zs