Bin or not to bin!

[grahamdvddvddvd]

I got my old pc out and thought i would see if i could get it working !

Well its a pentium 3 550mhz.
It came with Windows 98 but I installed Windows XP a long time ago.

Plugged it in and the normal boot up screens came up, and it kept cycling round and not getting anywhere with press f1 to continue etc

So I changed the 1st boot up, to the disc drive and put my Windows XP disc in and it came up with searching for boot from CD rom and then it just cylces round to the opening screen again ? (boot up disc not found )

So i got my copy of Windows 98 and put that in the disc drive, again it went to searching for boot up disc but it came up with a new screen with the optoion to Boot from hard disc or boot from cd drive with a countdown in seconds to make your choice, but it would not let you input a number 2 (boot from cd drive) ? after the countdown went to 0 it just cycles around again ?

What choices do i have ? many thanks

[nevermind1534]

1. Does it even have a boot from CD option in the BIOS?
2. The windows 98 CD was not bootable. You would need a boot floppy (I just downloaded a bootable CD to use with VMware). You can get a Windows 98 foppy from bootdisk.com

[BuzzKillington]

I know it's blasphemy around here to trash a rig but honestly... 550MHz? That's old school P3 and pretty pointless to have unless you want to use it as a server. I say either donate it, practice your modding on the case, put it on the curb or craigslist or have some fun demolishing it. Another possible use is to use it as a testing station for distributions before you throw any on your main rig.

[nevermind1534]

550MHz is fine for the average user that just does internet browsing, assuming you can get enough RAM to put into it.

[rithunder916]

OVER CLOCK IT! hahaha, it would make a perfect linux firewall.......i have a 400mhz amd pc running as my firewall and it's perfectly suited for it.



Mike

[nevermind1534]

I have a 550 (I think) running at 800 MHz. It defaulted to that clock for some reason. And that's without any OV. Maybe it's the unsupported PC133 RAM that I'm using in it.

[grahamdvddvddvd]

I just wanted to have a play around with it ! I got a windows xp disc and i thought booting from the cd would at least get me to the cd key code page but it will not even get that far ?

[nevermind1534]

I just wanted to have a play around with it ! I got a windows xp disc and i thought booting from the cd would at least get me to the cd key code page but it will not even get that far ?

Not if that computer's bios won't support booting from CDs. Microsoft has a downloadable thing that lets you make floppies to boot off of to start installing xp.

[grahamdvddvddvd]

I did install windows xp ages ago and it worked, but then it all started having problems,booting up! so bought a new pc and put it in the attic, and thought id have a mess about with it, just wanted to get it halfway there before getting a key for it ?

[nevermind1534]

did you upgrade to xp from within windows, or did you boot off of the CD?