rridgely Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 I have an interesting(not really, but humor me) story to tell. I've spent maybe 3 hours a day for the last 2 days trying to make a working pc out of a couple junkers. The end result was going to be for a friend who didn't have a reliable pc. So I spent one day testing components and getting something together that works.(1.2 ghz celeron, 380mb ram(max 512), dvd-rom drive, all in a case that was the least crappy to work in. Next came software. I had an old windows me disc that I got probably 5 years ago and never used. I went through hell trying to get it to boot, only to make it work in 3 seconds after the right google search(long story). Anyway I get ME installed, security updates, ect. As I'm downloading some basic software I realize that there isn't a whole lot that will work. Opera does, flash/java newest don't, no free AV software(avast only had mail scanning?). Then I got blue screens one after another because of the 56k modem not being detected. I hadn't used a win 9x system in probably 3 years.. and now I know I never need to use one again. I rebooted that computer more today than I do my own in 2 years. What a piece of junk. Lack of recent software, buggy as all hell, and pretty much 0 security assurance all added up to the fact that I was wasting my time. I decided "screw it" and installed the newest version of xubuntu. Firefox 3, openoffice, flash/java, ect ect all work out of the box and the machine still runs nicely(as you could expect). I just hope it holds up for a while now. WIN 9X users abandon ship. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eldmannen Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Win9x is pain. It is hell. Never really been a good system, always sucked, because the architecture was crap. Nice that you got Xubuntu to save the day, and it worked well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenknight Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Win ME was the worst of them all; the best use for that disc is as a coaster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rridgely Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Well I was going to leave xubuntu on here. But I was browsing amazon and found a new copy of windows 2000 for only $35 with shipping. I know support for windows 2000 ends in a year or so but its pretty much the best OS for this computer. It will be able to still run new software and it will be more familiar. I don't think thats a bad deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James_A Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Interesting story. If you want to stick with Windows, then I have found that Windows 2000 installs and runs on just about anything built in the last 12 years. Yes, I know there are exceptions, but there are with every OS ever written. As for stability, there's just no comparison between 9x/ME and 2000. Plus, there's no problem with more than 128MB of RAM. Unless you work really hard to disable stuff, Windows 2000 requires rather less RAM than XP out-of-the-box. A 1.2GHz Celeron with 384MB RAM should work quite well, unless you are PhotoShopping or Video Editing. But why would you ever want to be PhotoShopping on old hardware, anyway? . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenknight Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 I agree - this computer first ran Win 2000 (700MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM at that time ), and it worked great. It will really zip on that machine you've got. Actually, you could run XP just fine if you increased the RAM to 512 MB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rridgely Posted August 11, 2009 Author Share Posted August 11, 2009 I got 2000 installed and this old junker actually runs alright. Its got some crappy intel video chip (810e?) so it barely runs even youtube, but its good enough for pretty much everything else. Email, sufing, maybe openoffice, haven't tried it yet. At least it works and doesn't crash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James_A Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 With an 800 series integrated video chip, the first thing you look for is something to put in the AGP slot. But then it soon turns into being the first step down the constant hardware upgrade spiral. I'm guessing that OpenOffice will work fine. If you just want basic word-processing and spreadsheet -- or you already have the latest JRE -- you don't even need the Sun Java runtime that comes bundled with it. However, finding openoffice for Windows without Java means searching the official download mirrors, because it is not shown on openoffice's own download page. It's called OOo_3.1.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe instead of OOo_3.1.0_Win32Intel_install_wJRE_en-US.exe. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rridgely Posted August 11, 2009 Author Share Posted August 11, 2009 This thing doesn't even have an agp slot. I'm not going to bother with any old crappy pci stuff. I'm just going to leave it as is and once it dies its done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rridgely Posted August 12, 2009 Author Share Posted August 12, 2009 I set this computer up today and I'm sending it away tomorrow. One interesting thing I noticed is that firefox on old hardware is not so smooth. I put opera 9.6 on here and it runs just as smooth as it does on my newer machines. I was pretty impressed with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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