I used my 6x86 for word processing until ~2007. Improved focus was the goal, but even without a network card and just Word 97 in front of you, you'll still be easily distracted if you don't want to do it.

My P3 500 was a "side system" for playing around on Linux (I learned a lot on it) and extensive Windows 9x gaming, and I actually used it as a guest PC. Firefox (the latest ESR at the time, it was on Debian) limped with Facebook impressively. My P3 867 runs Windows 7 can could be a decent fallback system, if I didn't mind losing virtual machines and such.

I think that a Dxr2/3 card could play DVD even on a 486 PCI. Never tried that low with mine.

What about a pure DOS machine to use as main pc? Do you think you could push yourself that far?

Slowest daily use machine I had to put up with is my WinXP rig... My Asus G751JY was sent back to RMA (yellow corner screen issue) and I spent two and a half weeks on a Pentium D 940 / 1GB DDR1 / Radeon X1950 PRO (AGP). The thing runs great actually - I even use chrome on it. No complaints here, since I barely play new games. I finished Wolfentein The new order on my laptop, sent it to RMA, then played Black and White, Doom 3 and Far Cry 1 on the XP rig.

I did try web surfing on my Pentium MMX rig (for poops and giggles 😁 ) - works OK with K-Meleon and Win98. No flash or Java tough.

By the way I tried Ubuntu 8.04 with the K62/500 and it runs even live but I much prefer an old Win o.s.

kanecvr wrote:

Slowest daily use machine I had to put up with is my WinXP rig... My Asus G751JY was sent back to RMA (yellow corner screen issue) and I spent two and a half weeks on a Pentium D 940 / 1GB DDR1 / Radeon X1950 PRO (AGP). The thing runs great actually - I even use chrome on it. No complaints here, since I barely play new games. I finished Wolfentein The new order on my laptop, sent it to RMA, then played Black and White, Doom 3 and Far Cry 1 on the XP rig.

I did try web surfing on my Pentium MMX rig (for poops and giggles 😁 ) - works OK with K-Meleon and Win98. No flash or Java tough.

I actually MUCH prefer surfing into those system than newest. If you look at how many things a modern browser loads besides even showing some damn text or images is just awful not to mention all the ad opened connections.

Well that's the thing - Chrome on my XP rig has Ghostery and Adblock installed so it's VERY speedy even on 1GB of ram.

On the other hand, using K-Meleon or old Opera on My Athlon XP 2600+ is a pain in the ass on some pages since I can't find compatible add / script blocker for these browsers.

Can you recommend a like Win98 compatible browser with that functionality built-in?

P4 laptops on your lap? Not a bad idea to use them if you don't want to have kids and the idea of a vasectomy is too much for ya...

Well on my Windows 98 box I did install Office XP professional and have my email download there, and I sometimes browse the web on it from Opera 9.4 though its slow 🤣.

kanecvr wrote:

Well that's the thing - Chrome on my XP rig has Ghostery and Adblock installed so it's VERY speedy even on 1GB of ram.

On the other hand, using K-Meleon or old Opera on My Athlon XP 2600+ is a pain in the ass on some pages since I can't find compatible add / script blocker for these browsers.

Can you recommend a like Win98 compatible browser with that functionality built-in?

Presto Opera supports Ghostery, but I'm not sure how recent a version you need. You can disable JScript, force "plug-in on demand" to kill Flash and others, and load the MVPS hosts file to eliminate a lot of the left-overs. 😀

browse the web with IE 5.5, almost no adds will load as java and flash are confused by it.

Two years ago I tried using a dual 1.25ghz MDD G4, with 2gb RAM, Radeon 9600, and OSX 10.4 for everyday tasks. That lasted a few days before I got completely fed up, alas the Intel switch has been quite bad for old Motorola machines. It can do standard browsing fine, but any sort of video brings it to it's knees. In terms of a Windows PC the oldest I've used recently for general purpose tasks would be a Dell Precision 670, 2.6ghz Xeon, 4gb, 8800gt, it ran good, but it's just a bit loud. Anything older than that for general tasks, no way, walk away not today.

I like retro machines to be just that, for running retro software using period correct hardware. Modern tasks on ancient systems sounds like an awful time to me. The modern internet is bloated and inefficient, no reason to subject a nice old system to that. All my machines that are older than a P4 are strictly offline gaming machines, no NICs even installed.

My old 486 DX2-66 with 64MB of RAM and a 8GB HDD split into 4 2GB Partitions (roughly).

Internet is okay for light surfing, but doing facebook is impossible, their server just won't take requests from anything that's not Windows NT. E-mail works great through my super-old copy of Outlook Express, and out of all the browsers Opera 3.62 is the one that does the best. It seems to visit everything in at least a reasonably functional state. I have even posted to some modern guitar forums on that rig (should visit Vogons on the 486 one of these days). I'm currently messing around with flash plugins, and have come ridiculously close to getting YouTube working, I got it up to the loading circle in I think either Opera or IE a few times.

I have CD-Burning capabilities through CDRoast, I have WinPlay3 and WinAmp for MP3 and CD playback, oddly it's the ONLY computer in the house that will play my old Demo CD's from the early 2000's, so I might have to consider ripping those on the 486 (strangely I keep finding legitimate uses for old tech).

Once I get a DVD Decoder card, DVD playback will be possible if I install a DVD Drive. I also have a TV Capture card so if I really really wanted to I could play Atari 2600 and NES games through this particular setup, or even leech off the cable box. Old stuff for entertainment from Ebaums World or Bored.com still work, but things far more advanced don't.

About the only shortcomings is the occasional GEneral Protection Fault due to Windows 3.1x's wonky memory management. Even then, I might be able to update my Himem.Sys with a newer version and take advantage of having 128MB of RAM assuming WFWG has no limitation on RAM size itself.

Other entertainment, NES Emulation is possible, If I upgraded to a DX4-100 and a better sound card, Z26 could emulate Atari games. I still do a fair bit of NES ROM Hacking on the 486 (I Like the DOS version of Tile Layer and HExpose over windows utilities), plus I have a huge library of DOS Games, and lots of productivity software that can be pretty handy such as Harvard Graphics 3.0 presentations, WP51 for document writing, Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets, and If I really wanted to go crazy I use Graf-X II for graphics.

I always considered the 486 the center point, the tipping point for vintage/modern, especially with how much things are getting less climatic in upgrading these days. Depending on configuration, a 486 can tip either towards "lowly slow DOS Box only good for playing old DOS games" to "Holy crap I had no idea this thing could do this" modern capabilities. Some expensive and rare hardware of the time really helps tilt the scale in the "modern" direction more.

Great story thank! But is the mobo pci based or only isa. Cause I don't find dvd mpeg2 isa decoder cards. That would be nice. Mine mainboard has only isa and I have no cache to mount so not many powerful improvements available. Good is that after trying uncountable simms I found the only compatible that were 16Mb each so I maxed it with 64Mb. Windows 95 run quiet well but it always feel over the top. I was expecting too much probably jumping from the DX2-66 to the DX4-100; I should try a 5v/3.3v adapted AMD processor to push it more.

I did a nice job putting the all system on a modded atx case with an old AT supply. I made a plate for a standard switch and cutted the vertical pci plates for putting the horizontal isa 3-1 switch with an alluminium metal plate.
Hard disk is maxed at 512Mb and thank to the long isa SB16 having standard ide connector versus the usual toshiba/whatever connector, I installed a secondary master 6.4gbyte for storing apps.
CD drive is shared on the main only IDE. I had to put a small fan on the Overdrive 5V DX4-100 cause even with its nice high heatsink I would suspect it heat up too much as the Overdrive 5V DX2-66 almost burned my fingers immediately.

- Apple IIe till 95, OK no internet but was the only computer in the house to type up homework on (and printing to a dot matrix printer)
-486 DX2 66, new in 95 and lasted till '98 When I got MY P2 400, the Family PC got upgraded within 6 months after seeing how far PC's had come.
- HP D510 (P4 2.0) from around 2007 till 2013, free ex work PC and I just needed a basic PC for web browsing and was still thinking UK would be short term. Painfully slow towards the end, whole system would freeze during AV updates. Flash finally killed that PC's usefulness and now have a ex work Duel core more up to the task

From 2009 to 2010 i had as a main computer at home a Pentium IV 2Ghz with 768 SDRam (not DDR) and a volt modded Geforce 3 ti500, and i played a LOT of unrealtournament on it online.
Today at work my computer is a Pentium 560 3.6Ghz with a Geforce 2MX400, and i need to use it for internet and word\excel quite a lot. In my free time (launch time) i watch videos and play unreal1 coop online.

mrferg wrote:

Two years ago I tried using a dual 1.25ghz MDD G4, with 2gb RAM, Radeon 9600, and OSX 10.4 for everyday tasks. That lasted a few days before I got completely fed up, alas the Intel switch has been quite bad for old Motorola machines. It can do standard browsing fine, but any sort of video brings it to it's knees. In terms of a Windows PC the oldest I've used recently for general purpose tasks would be a Dell Precision 670, 2.6ghz Xeon, 4gb, 8800gt, it ran good, but it's just a bit loud. Anything older than that for general tasks, no way, walk away not today.

Out of curiosity on the MDD - did you try TenFourFox or any of the "newer" software for PPC? 😊

creepingnet wrote:

My old 486 DX2-66 with 64MB of RAM and a 8GB HDD split into 4 2GB Partitions (roughly).

Internet is okay for light surfing, but doing facebook is impossible, their server just won't take requests from anything that's not Windows NT. E-mail works great through my super-old copy of Outlook Express, and out of all the browsers Opera 3.62 is the one that does the best. It seems to visit everything in at least a reasonably functional state. I have even posted to some modern guitar forums on that rig (should visit Vogons on the 486 one of these days). I'm currently messing around with flash plugins, and have come ridiculously close to getting YouTube working, I got it up to the loading circle in I think either Opera or IE a few times.

Pretty impressive for a 66. I run my 120 on the internet sometimes. Opera 9.60 works pretty well (imagine a 2008 browser on a 486)
If I don't need modern JS and CSS, Opera 3.60 is much faster.
Here is how you can play youtube on a 486: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl7rZMtjJE (except that might only work on Win2000)

I have my doubts if 66MHz is fast enough since 120MHz barely does it. Are you sure that facebook cares about the OS? Not just the browser?
I don't use facebook so it isn't a problem for me.

About the only shortcomings is the occasional GEneral Protection Fault due to Windows 3.1x's wonky memory management. Even then, I might be able to update my Himem.Sys with a newer version and take advantage of having 128MB of RAM assuming WFWG has no limitation on RAM size itself.

Good god. You are running 3.x on it? Why not at least 95?

Other entertainment, NES Emulation is possible, If I upgraded to a DX4-100 and a better sound card, Z26 could emulate Atari games. I still do a fair bit of NES ROM Hacking on the 486 (I Like the DOS version of Tile Layer and HExpose over windows utilities), plus I have a huge library of DOS Games, and lots of productivity software that can be pretty handy such as Harvard Graphics 3.0 presentations, WP51 for document writing, Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets, and If I really wanted to go crazy I use Graf-X II for graphics.

NES emulation is easily possible even with your current processor. I did it on a /33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i9jF7R7EzQ

I never really had an outdated PC. I upgraded to 95. Then to XP. And finally to 7.

386SX wrote:

Great story thank! But is the mobo pci based or only isa. Cause I don't find dvd mpeg2 isa decoder cards. That would be nice. Mine mainboard has only isa and I have no cache to mount so not many powerful improvements available. Good is that after trying uncountable simms I found the only compatible that were 16Mb each so I maxed it with 64Mb. Windows 95 run quiet well but it always feel over the top. I was expecting too much probably jumping from the DX2-66 to the DX4-100; I should try a 5v/3.3v adapted AMD processor to push it more.

It has to be PCI. This enables a bus mastering IDE controller which helps lower CPU usage. Transferring all data from IDE over ISA to a decoder card would be too heavy.

Having an ISA video card and IDE controller will limit your machine. I guess anything faster than a 486-33 only makes sense with at least VLB.

Yes, I would like to try a real SIS PCI based 486 motherboard soon or later.