• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

A bit of advice for a Newbie

C

crazyzulu

New Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
2
I'm currently considering buying an old MS-DOS PC. I have two criteria:

1) I want the computer to have the following capabilities:

Email
Web browsing (Text only is fine, especially because, I'd assume, most websites probably won't render properly on an old graphical browser)
Music playback & composition
Playback & editing of small videos
Word processing (preferably MS Word, but I would be willing to use something like WordPerfect if there is some way to convert it to modern Word documents)
PDF viewing/editing
Something like MS-Paint & photo editing
Gaming up to the late 80s
Spreadsheets
Something akin to PowerPoint
A CD drive, if it is necessary for music, PDFs, etc.
A SMALL HD (~30 MB)

2) It should be AS OLD AS POSSIBLE while still being capable of all of the above.

Basically, I want a computer that can do as much as possible of what I currently do on my modern PC, but is still pretty old.

So, my questions are these:

1) around what year should this computer be from?
2) What are the lowest possible necessary specs?
3) Is there any capability above that would force me to have a computer from the 90s? I really want to stick to the 80s if at all possible, so I could drop a few capabilities if I had too.

Gd'mornin!
 
I'd think playback/editing of small videos would be downright painful with a 386. I'd suggest a fast 486, like my parents had when Windows 95 introduced us to AVI files. Everything else might be accomplished fairly well using a 386, though (although I'm not sure of the state of MS-DOS web browsers).
 
Would need some kind of text based web browser. They were out there but not sure if you can find any. And even if you did it would not work to well with the modern internet with all the Java scripting etc. Good luck with that and I also agree with the others a high end 386 or mid level 486 would be a much better choice.
 
From personal experience Arachne works well as a browser (although not really text I guess) but it is DOS (and not Windows). I have that working on a 386DX 40Mhz with MTCP and a packet driver in DOS. There is even a FPU enabled version which I could not get to work properly (for other reasons). Like Stone says with a 386 you can all of what you said totally fine (get a top end DX@40Mhz), except playing and editing videos.

While a 486DX2 66Mhz can say play videos, editing is another beast altogether as compressing is way more compute intensive than playback so even a midrange 486 might struggle.

Also a 30Mb HDD is not a realistic target for your requirements. Since the software for all the stuff you want will take that much.

Regards,
Vlad.
 
Don't overthink this. Grab the oldest computer you can find locally and have fun with it. Browse your local Craigslist/Kijiji and look through your local thrift stores and see what comes up. If you start looking for specific hardware in order to meet specific requirements, the cost and difficulty of acquiring it will increase exponentially.
 
What was the first computer capable of that stuff without much effort/pain? I'd say Pentium 150 (1996ish).
I have a Pentium 166 that'll do everything from playing Police Quest to GLQuake, it'll play an MP3, and even watch a Windows AVI or MPEG without a hardware decoder board. It'll browse the internet (barely) with Firefox 2.0, open ZIP files, view a PDF etc.

If you were happy to give up on some of those, especially video/music, then a 386DX would be my pick.

But I agree with vwestlife, just see what you can find and then see what you can do with it (and have fun in the process).
 
I'll confess to pulling out various old machines, but a P1 will give most of what the OP wants without undue pain. USB comes with many of these systems, which, trust me, can come in handy.

I'll pull out an XT quite often, as there is some CPU speed-dependent software where only that machine will do. I've got 286, 386 and 486 boxes, but almost never bring them out. P1, P2 and P3--lots of times.
 
Most of what you want could be done with an XT-286 class machine, but you'd need to be very patient with it, and know a decent amount about MS/PC-DOS (since you did state that you're a "Newbie"). A 386/486 would obviously be better. Arachne could be used for the DOS-based browser (NetTamer would be better on an 8088, however), there were several other programs to do most of what you want to do (except "video-editing", which would need a large amount of RAM), but finding them (and drivers for some hardware) would be challenging at best. 30MB of HDD space would just get you inside this "DOS-limit"

As mentioned above, a mid range Pentium (133-166MHz circa 1995-96) would likely be the best route should you require Windows (preferably 95C or 98SE). Perhaps dual-booting with DOS for the games. Plenty of speed to handle most light-duty Windows-based browsing and decent enough hardware-support for most video/sound/network cards of that era; but you'd also need much more than 30MB of HDD space and as almost as much RAM as your OS would support. Should you go this route (Win98 ), this link might prove of value:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/105936-last-versions-of-software-for-windows-98se/

Also realize that only a few anti-virus packages still support any version of Windows before 2K/XP.
 
Last edited:
The fastest, cheapest way to do all of that is go to eBay or CL and pick up something like a Dell 3000 or 82xx series system from 1982. Most later systems have SATA hard drives and these and earlier systems have ATA drives. Install DOS 6.2 or later (I prefer PC DOS 7.1 because it has year 2000 support and one of the smallest DOS footprints) and Windows 3.11 along with Win32s support and Video for Windows and all of the the apps you want - they'll fly on these machines which range between 1.7Ghz and 3.4Ghz. You can often find one of these machines for under $75USD. The biggest problem is trying to enable networking, hi-rez video, and sound for Win 3.1 and DOS as the adapters for those in these and in later machines lack DOS and Windows divers. I solved that by picking up PCI adapters on eBay for which BOTH DOS and Windows 3.1 drivers were readily available - an Intel 10/100B NIC for networking, a Matrox G400 for 1024 24-bit video, and and Ensoniq sound card. With all of tha I built my Dell 8200 2.8Ghz DOS/Win31 for under $100. I am building another one now - a Dell 3000 @ 3.4Ghz DOS7/Win311 system for even less (which I might sell afterwards fully configured). If you go this route, the real work is in setting up the drivers and config/autoexec properly.

You can also go much older, but the older you go, the more work, expense, (and fun!) it is to get it all working - but so satisfying. Here is my very old PX/XT rig that does all you list, but it wasn't cheap, fast, nor trivial to do: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/krYrxr

You could also go for a 'tweener' box that still has some ISA board support. The one I favor that I still have is a GateWay GP7-500 tower, which is more than capable at 500-800Ghz and good legacy support. Again, I'll likely sell that box pretty soon as well, fully configured.

Regards,
Mike
 
Last edited:
nc_mike said:
You can also go much older, but the older you go, the more work, expense, (and fun!) it is to get it all working - but so satisfying. Here is my very old PX/XT rig that does all you list, but it wasn't cheap, fast, nor trivial to do: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/krYrxr
Regards,
Mike
Click to expand...

Mike,

You should hook up an expansion unit to that thing! :)

To the OP (Original Poster),

I have to concur with the opinion of most of my forum mates, something 386'ish to Pentium'ish, with a motherboard that has both ISA, AGP, and PCI.

-D
 
nc_mike said:
The fastest, cheapest way to do all of that is go to eBay or CL and pick up something like a Dell 3000 or 82xx series system from 1982.
Click to expand...

Wow, a Dell introduced at the same time as the IBM 5150 PC, with RDRAM and PCI slots! :)

Seriously, if you're looking for something, you'll probably want to find something with at least a couple of ISA slots. P1s usually have them; less so P2, P3 and very very rarely on P4s.
 
lyonadmiral said:
Mike,

You should hook up an expansion unit to that thing! :)

To the OP (Original Poster),

I have to concur with the opinion of most of my forum mates, something 386'ish to Pentium'ish, with a motherboard that has both ISA, AGP, and PCI.

-D
Click to expand...

Yah, I've contemplated doing just that from time to time, though I am not sure what else I could add to the configuration that would add value. I was pretty happy to use all 8 slots and I don't know what conflicts I might run into if I add an expansion unit with all that's in there, and especially not sure how compatible the expansion unit would be with the Intel InBoard/386. It could help with offloading the power draw; the expansion has its own PSU and I've pushed the base XT's 135W PSU to the limit - so much so that I backed off replacing the 486DX Cyrix CPU with a 133MHz Kingston Tubochip via an adapter because the base PSU couldn't even start the machine as the draw was too much for it.

Regards,
Mike
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top