Found a 386 in the trash, what can I do with it?

[Sirber]

Found a 386 in the trash, what can I do with it?

AMD 386
HDD unkmnown size
EDO ram unknown size
5 1/4 floppy
3 1/2 floppy
no lan card

:scared:

[futurex]

hey that's mine! give it back i'm dying to play far cry with sexy graphics

[Sirber]

pfff now it's mine, ALL MINE :angry:

All those sweet MHz... MINE!!!

[feedback]

Finders keepers, losers weepers! :p

[scharfis_brain]

Get "Stunts - 4D Sports Driving" and have some Car Racing fun ;)

[Sirber]

sweet, that was a great game! Could get Commander Keen too :D

[Doom9]

Found a 386 in the trash, what can I do with it?put it back where it came from? have it recycled so the environment won't suffer?

[xDrJx]

donate it to a retirement centre so people there could live trough fast-paced action games :sly:

[Sirber]

but but... it has DUAL KEYBOARD!!!! :D :D :D

[Joe Fenton]

If you're into retro gaming, you can set it to run such old classics as DOOM, Heretic, Abuse, etc..

Given it's a 386, it should have an external floating point unit like the 387. If it doesn't, you'll have to avoid programs which use FP math.

[squid_80]

Find some 5 1/4 disks to store your important data, safe in the knowledge that no-one else can read them. Security through obscurity. :cool:

What do you mean by dual keyboard? Never heard of that on a system without USB.

[Sirber]

well, it has a AT plug almost in front and another behind it. I'll try to find 2 ISA LAN cards and install debian :) Could be a cool router... :D

[Smile2]

you can make a cool key chain off the CPU or the RAM

you can use 3.5" Floopy Drive up until now.

Sell 5.25" Drive off eBay + the HDD as Bonus

[scharfis_brain]

well, it has a AT plug almost in front and another behind it.

are you sure, that the front Port (in German called DIN-Port) isn't a tape-port in real?
(Use a Audio tape recorder as data storage device)

[Sirber]

well, it's the same big round old keyboard hole :)

[scharfis_brain]

hmmm. wouldn't give much on that!

Todays PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard connectors also do share the same hole geometry.
(couldn't express that better...)
But if you confuse them, your devices won't work....

[Sirber]

Found a 386 in the trash, what can I do with it?

AMD 386
HDD unkmnown size
EDO ram unknown size
5 1/4 floppy
3 1/2 floppy
no lan card

:scared:
EGA
8 MB RAM (EDO)
120 MB HDD

I added a LAN card, an AT keyboard and an IDE CDROM. It booted :D HDD has no bad sector. I'm getting Slackware 4.0 for it :D

[laserfan]

Run Linux on it!

[mod]

..Linux Firewall... :)

[tareek]

yes, linux (for example, slackware (http://www.slackware.com/), small linux (http://smalllinux2.sourceforge.net/), tomsrtbt (http://www.toms.net/rb/)) will be good os for it, or, win95 .

as these linux takes up very small place, so, a dual boot (win95 & linux), dual partition (may be, 25MB/95 MB) PC, sounds even better . after installing win95, it can be further tweaked to use even lesser resources . win95 will definitely give you more software option .

you may get cheap isa multi feature card from ebay, which may have both lan and audio, etc onboard . firewall soft (linux) ipcop, Endian Firewall, etc, or, (win) NAT32, Tiny Personal Firewall, etc can be used .

but then again, its also not that hard/costly to find, more powerful board/PC for a very low price to do the same job, so, its not a complete good hardware to give it a meaningful soul .

[Sirber]

I'm not sure Win95 runs with EGA :)

While with Slackware I can have some fun :D

[foxyshadis]

I can say from personal experience that it doesn't. ^.~

So how much power does it suck, and how noisy? It sounds like it'd be more useful as a conversation piece than anything. :p

[Sirber]

The 386 is not very noisy and can make a sweet HTTP server :D

If x264 codec be written in Delphi 2006, what then. Is it possible that in Delphi 2006 64-bit codec get more speed-up. ~ Kostarum Rex Persialol!!! Some people doesn't know that... they don't know

[tareek]

ofcourse it can be installed in Win95 !!!
please see this link,
http://toastytech.com/guis/misc2.html
Win95 was and can be installed with EGA video card also .

use Win3x ega video drivers, "Microsoft Legacy Video Driver" .
in config.sys, you may use ... device=c:\dos\display.sys con=(ega,437,2) .

EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter) :
Max of 640 x 350 (16 colors, 60Hz) in Graphics Mode .
Max of 640 x 350 (2-color, black & white) in Graphics Mode .
Max of 80 x 25 resolution in Text Mode .

Win95 in EGA looks kind of "stretched" or "widescreen", because of ega res .

[Sirber]

Linux or the trash again :devil: ;)

good find though :D

[zilog jones]

EGA
8 MB RAM (EDO)
120 MB HDD
120MB? Wow, I only had 80 in my 386! ^_^
I highly doubt that's EDO RAM - IIRC EDO stuff only came round with the first Pentiums. It should be fast page, probably in a hideous array of 1MB modules.

Being a student in a university, I've found much better stuff being thrown out - including a Pentium Pro 200 server (first time I've seen an Intel-branded PC!), a couple of PIIs, a PIII 450, and even a Duron 600 (of course with a god-awful PC Chips motherboard). My best find has to be a 19" Dell Trinitron (Sony tube) monitor though :D

[Sirber]

and AMD 386 is kinda rare :)

[Sirber]

Well... I had to use the "lowmem" kernel to boot and format, then my CD drive wasn't working. It's dead for CDR :(.

[squid_80]

and AMD 386 is kinda rare :)
No way! Once AMD brought out the DX-40, nobody used anything else.
At least I hope it's a DX, the SX model deserves a U in the middle. Unless you were tight on money and could only afford 2 SIMMs instead of 4.

[Sirber]

DX only have a float coprocessor added :)

[squid_80]

Nuh-uh, you're thinking of 486. With 386, a DX meant 32-bit external bus while SX meant 16-bit external and 32-bit internal. Co-processor was always an external chip with 386.

[zilog jones]

...then my CD drive wasn't working.
Erm, an ATAPI CD-ROM drive probably won't work at all in a 386. If you want a CD-ROM drive you're probably best off getting one of the ones that plug into old Sound Blaster cards (some look like they use IDE cables, but they're not IDE!). Most 386s and 486s with CD drives used these.

[Sirber]

no, it's IDE running on an IDE card. The drive is just defect.

[Nudnik]

Remove the back panel, keep the components as decorations as an earlier poster suggested; key chain, christmas tree, front door knocker etc. Once the back is off, you can use the case as your work area trash can while you build a real PC. :D

[Sharktooth]

i have an oldies like that, 386 40Mhz (AMD too) :)
it's still running with freebsd and it is the primary (!!!) router and cache (proxy) in my office.
it has a SCSI controller though with 16GB HDD.
Remove linux and try freebsd... its much better on those machines:)

[Nematocyst]

If you have real need for some of the server tasks it can do, then great. But realize that for most people there are support costs-- monitor, keyboard, space. If you're going to be throwing money at it to make it useful, you may as well just buy a dedicated router/net drive which won't consume as much power or generate as much noise.

Personally, I'd throw it back in the trash. Yeah, it can be fun to prove you can make such a weak machine into something useful using free software. But aside from the fun factor, there isn't much in the way of legitimate use for it since modern alternatives will likely cost lest to keep up.

[Nematocyst]

If you're already running X somewhere on your network, then you can probably convert it into a dumb X terminal. I'm not completely sure of the system requirements, specifically memory and video card, but I've read that you can make a 386 into a perfectly usable X terminal that way. Use google.

[Doobie]

but but... it has DUAL KEYBOARD!!!! :D :D :D

It supports one keyboard. The front keyboard jack plugs into the rear jack.

A 386 is worthless. Get rid of it.

Many DOS games would choke on it. DOS games can be a pain to get to run and few are any fun, especially compared to modern games.

It would take months to encode a movie on it; which you couldn't do, anyway, for lack of drive space. I doubt you could get it connected to a network; and even if you could, it would be too slow to be useful for even the simplest network tasks.

[Sirber]

I added a 10mbps LAN card. If I can get an OS on it, I can make a simple HTTP server or a router.

[Sharktooth]

FreeBSD!!! ;)

[Sirber]

Well, seems something is bad in it. I get a lot of "Bus Error" and the CDROM worked only once. I think it's going back where it came from...