Genesis Flash Card?

tails92 · Post by **tails92** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:55 pm

The old PC way is good, I've been given three working old computer motherboards in the last months. But if you add case, DVD drive and hard disk, you can easily go in the $70-$80 range.
This is a good reason for keeping old hardware

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:22 pm

If you live in a big enough town in the US, you can find places like St. Vincent DePaul where they sell donated appliances, clothes, etc, and also computers. You can pick up an old Pentium 90 MHz system with an old 13" monitor for $30-$50 depending on what else it has. They generally clean it out, format the drive, slap on Windows 95, and put in a new battery for the CMOS.

You can find other stuff cheap as well. I bought an old Apple II C+, and a portable C64 from one. The Apple + B&W monitor + color monitor + external drive was $10. The portable C64 was $5.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:58 pm

That's strange. In my country in big towns you can find Pentium I or II for free, and actually it's hard to find someone who use anything older than PIV or 1 GHz+ Celerons/Athlons. But if you want to find old 'home' computer (C64 etc) or 286-386, it will cost you up to $100.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:01 pm

It is hard to find old PCs here now, even for money, and simply because all are thrown out to garbage. Everyone has a rather modern PC now... 386, 486, P1, P2 are rare here. All non PC computers are ultr@ r@re. No Mac, no C64, no Amiga, only IBM PC compatibles.

tails92 · Post by **tails92** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:01 pm

A 386 for $100? I got two for free, one didn't work, and one has its motherboard sitting on my desktop waiting to be put in a case.
I live in southern Italy and usual shops don't usually sell stuff for computers less than 2-3 years old, but some do, but good luck finding stuff there at cheap prices.
Pentium IIs run Windows XP just fine if they've got at least 128MB, and on my 386 (that has got only 4 mb of ram) I managed to get my own text-mode Linux distro up and running, also with internet access.
It's just stupid to throw old computers in the garbage can if they still work completely IMHO when one could donate them to someone who hasn't got the money to get a new one.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:43 pm

XP on P2 with 128MB RAM and running fine !? XP runs bareably on a P4 with 2GB of RAM... its still slower than 98SE on P2 and 128MB RAM....

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:03 pm

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:XP on P2 with 128MB RAM and running fine !? XP runs bareably on a P4 with 2GB of RAM... its still slower than 98SE on P2 and 128MB RAM....

XP does work on small amounts of memory. The running "fine" part is a matter of opinion, though.

HardWareMan · Post by **HardWareMan** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:12 pm

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:XP on P2 with 128MB RAM and running fine !? XP runs bareably on a P4 with 2GB of RAM... its still slower than 98SE on P2 and 128MB RAM....

I had a experience work on Celeron 366MHz and 192MB RAM with XP. I even was able watch some movies! But, to speed up that machine I had to do some basic tweaks, i.e. turn off visual effects and other things. All that tweaks is system native ability, no special tweak program was used. So, I have a IMHO: XP needs RAM, not a CPU speed.
Look at this!!!

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:20 pm

I got XP running on P75, with 48MB RAM, I do remember it did not want ot boot with 32MB, but maybe I just got tired of waiting...

XP is less responsive than 98SE no matter how strong your PC is, my gaming machine (AMD 64 X2 2.3GHz, 2GB 800DDR2) doesn't feel any faster than my shitty work machine (Celeron 1117, 512MB PC133) though games and stuff work much nicer. I've optimized XP as much as I could, but no, its not as nice as 98SE.

tails92 · Post by **tails92** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 10:28 am

Heh, once I tried the first Windows 95 version on my 386, clicky.
I used my Macronix MXIC 86010 ISA video card, that can do at most 256 colors, at 1024x768 resolution. I had to use 800x600 because my monitor didn't accept the signal it made for 1024x768.
I could even use 7zip, even if it was very slow.