I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world, but
here we are seeing a lot of low-end 486s being dumped.
I recently got two 486dx33 base units for $10 each, and
there are more on the way as firms upgrade for Y2K.
Most of these low-end 486s have eight 30pin SIMM slots,
so by using 1meg SIMMs (also throw-away items) they can
easily be given 8meg RAM. However, it's not so easy to
go beyond 8meg. Bigger 30pin SIMMs are hard to find, and
even when you do find them, they tend to be expensive.
Thus, the low-end 486 with 8meg RAM has become a kind
of standard surv486.
What can we do with this surv486? DOS ? Windows 3.1 ?
Are we obliged to use a survOS to match the survPC? Or
can we install an up-to-date, leading-edge OS that will
take our surv486 back into the mainstream?
CLI Linux works well on a low-end 486 with 8meg RAM, and
there is a lot you can do with such a machine. However,
some Linux programs (like Netscape) require the X GUI.
This is much more demanding. If we try to run Netscape
on our surv486, it will limp painfully.
So, basically, a low-end 486 with 8meg RAM is not good
enough to be a GUI machine under Linux. However, this
is not the case if you have TWO such machines. You can
get good performance in Netscape by networking two
surv486's together and sharing the processing between
them.
I've done this with a pair of 486dx33's (each with
8meg RAM) and they happily ran Netscape. In fact
the overall performance was similar to my 486dx100
with 16meg RAM. One surv486 ran X and the other ran
Netscape, and they communicated via coax ethernet
(another throw-away). It only took a couple of
simple commands to set it up, and it worked like
a dream.
So when you're rummaging through throw-away computer
equipment, keep an eye out for network cards/cables.
They are the key to setting up your own Linux cluster.
Cheers,
Steven
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