Got a new Computer (not what you think)
 

I got a computer from a friend, he works in a bank & they have thousands. Its really old & please dont laugh when you read the spec:

P166 MMX
64 Mgs ram
Win 98
No Cd or soundcard (thyell be installed this weekend).
2 Gig HD.

I know its a piece of shit but this is a second pooter & I use this one for net, games, etc etc...
I was thinking about installing a new OS on it, something other than windows. Just to get used to using something else.
Id like to play my emulators on it if its up to the job, snes, genesis, gba, etc.
Other than that it probably will be used just for playing music & Ive started writing a diary on it that may at one stage end up on the journals section here on TFP.

My Q to youz are these:

What OS should I get, keeping in mind the tragically low spec?
Will it play emulators?
Will it suppourt MP3's
Any other ideas?

Thanks for your time.

you should be able to put win98 on it.

the min os for 98 is a 75mhz something, and it only needs 24mb ram.

but you'll need a cdrom to do that.


i say put windows on it, then it'll be easier to network w/ the present one.

I dont want to network, THis pooter is in the parents house.
The "new" one has 98 is on it right now but Im thinkin about changing but I dont have a clue what or if its even possible. Im getting a CD & Soundcard this weekend so ill be able to copy shit & take it ove home.

Wow, did he not just say that he wanted somthing other than windows?

Anyways, try one of the big 3 of Linux, Suse, Mandrake, or Red Hat. One thing to keep in mind is weahter or not the newer versions of Linux will run on this machine. You may have better success with an older distro.

but my point was, if he wanted to network...

If and when you install a cd-rom, Mandrake 7.0 will run fine with the X gui. It meets your critieria, and the 2gb drive is a fine size for an older distro like this.

Mandarkes advantage is that they often matain backwards support for hardware longer than RH. Both 7.0 and 8.0 can still be downloaded free of charge from the ftp's and several books are on the market that come with this version of the distro as well as a well written user guide for linux beginers. This may be a good $15.00 to spend. Do a search at sourceforge for emuliators, I'm positivly sure they exist. the Gnome gui for linux has a media player that will handle mp3's just fine as well. the user interface is similar but different from win98, make the transition easier, and the system will not seem oddly slow running an older linux like this, in fact it will seem just fine without notice.

Good luck and remember to ask questions if help is needed, where always here.

HTH

If you install Mandrake, be careful not to get overzealous and install too many features. You will run out of HD space really fast.

Any up-to date Linux disro should run fine on this, however, you'll want to run a lightweight desktop enviorment on it, such as IceWM, instead of KDE or gnome. zsnes has a linux port, but you have to complie it, ant it probably won;t run great on that computer. Many emulator have linux ports. check http://www.zophar.net/unix/unix.phtml (if you want roms, PM me) You shouldn't have any problems playing MP3s on it.

Ok, first thanks for your time/advice all,
Second what about compatibility with windlws. If possible I want to transfer text files from the linux/mandrake pooter to this windows one. Is that possible. Also 1 more Q, would it be too ambitious to think about running an older ver of photoshop on it?
Thanks again for your time.

Since you said you won't be networking, I'm assuming you'll be transferring those text files via a disk or a CD. As such, you should have no difficulties there. If it's plain text, you may have an issue with line-breaks (you sometimes get the crazy ^M instead of a a line-break) but that's easy to fix with the standard "dos2unix" command which will likely be included in your distro (RedHat, Mandrake, whatever).

As for Photoshop -- No dice. Photoshop won't run in Linux. But if say you keep Windows on there, even then running Photoshop would be painful due to the lack of processing power and RAM.

Well, I figured photoshop was a longshot. No biggy.
Do any of youz any other ideas I could use this fossil of mine for?

Router/ document server for other computers. Use it as storage for written documents and such while installing routing functions for other computers?