got 69 old pcs for 2€

Zammy-Sam

Zammy-Sam

Desertchild
Lucky me, huh? Got 69 486DX4 100mhz - Pentium 133mhz pcs with graphic cards, network cards and ram for 2€. I am going to get a bunch of keyboards and 14inch crt screens for them and sell them at a price of 49€. This offer goes to ppl living close to me so I can offer them a free delivery and setup. If further options are desired - such as internet connection or networking - I thought of charging a wage of 10€ for every 15min.
Now, what I want to know is, which os would be the best for all these. I was thinking of a linux distribution that is for free and not wasting too much space. Any proposals which would be the best for these old systems and easiest to use?
Thanks!
 
I use Slackware, but it's not for the faint of heart. If you are new to Linux, don't bother...you'll wish they were Macs instead. :p However, Slack is much cleaner than most of the commercial distros and pretty snappy. Plus with slackpkg, you can keep the machines updated with packages from the slackware-current repository.

There's also Debian, though I would probably wait for Debian until "sarge" (the next release that will become stable) comes out in September. It will include a much better installer than what existed before in Debian Linux.

You could also go FreeBSD. I tried that briefly and was impressed not only with the installer but with how nice it ran on my older machine (PII-400).

As for easiest to install and use, any of the commercial Linux distros would do fine. SuSE is pretty good, at least in the x86 world. You could try Fedora, but it's pretty bloated and buggy from what I've heard. Or give Mandrake 10 a shot.

Of course, 69 machines would make a nice Beowulf cluster... ;)
 
Howabout Windows ME? To be truthful, if you install any kind of Linux on those boxes and offer your tech support skills, one of two situations is bound to arise:

1) The people completely stop using the computer, since Linux is foreign and difficult for a novice to understand. Yes, it's getting better, and your clients may think they're getting the hang of it, but they'll get frustrated to the point of quitting completely soon.

2) You'll be bombarded with tech support calls three times an hour. That's the nature of Linux: it likes to have a knowledgable UNIX user commanding it, not grandma down the street.

Windows ME has Windows Update for automatic updates... and it's Windows! They can actually go out and purchase simple software for it! Plus there's a wealth of Windows software all over the internet!

I know you're looking for low-cost, high-ROI solutions, and Linux is perfect since it's free, but think of the frustration and time wasted AFTER you've sold the computers and the customers want you to explain how to use Linux. You can't teach someone Linux in any reasonable amount of time. Plus, your customers will think you purposefully installed a foreign, difficult to learn OS on their computer so that they'd call you with tech support questions and you can charge them more.

Good luck, and let us know what you end up doing!
 
I'd suggest NetBSD - simple, clean, lightweight. Depending on the capability of the computer, xfce might be the best desktop environment, for much the same reasons.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Howabout Windows ME? To be truthful, if you install any kind of Linux on those boxes and offer your tech support skills, one of two situations is bound to arise:

1) The people completely stop using the computer, since Linux is foreign and difficult for a novice to understand. Yes, it's getting better, and your clients may think they're getting the hang of it, but they'll get frustrated to the point of quitting completely soon.

2) You'll be bombarded with tech support calls three times an hour. That's the nature of Linux: it likes to have a knowledgable UNIX user commanding it, not grandma down the street.

Windows ME has Windows Update for automatic updates... and it's Windows! They can actually go out and purchase simple software for it! Plus there's a wealth of Windows software all over the internet!

I know you're looking for low-cost, high-ROI solutions, and Linux is perfect since it's free, but think of the frustration and time wasted AFTER you've sold the computers and the customers want you to explain how to use Linux. You can't teach someone Linux in any reasonable amount of time. Plus, your customers will think you purposefully installed a foreign, difficult to learn OS on their computer so that they'd call you with tech support questions and you can charge them more.

Good luck, and let us know what you end up doing!
Click to expand...

I would have to disagree with your assessment that Linux would be too difficult for average people to use. Case in point:

I decided to test something out on my son and see how he would react to a computer that had Linux on it. I even decided to use Slackware for the test and made sure everything was configured for him to just go and play. The only thing I really needed to teach him was to click on the menu and select the dinosaur (Mozilla browser) to get to Noggin (which is his homepage). He can do this all by himself. Did I mention that my son is about to turn 3 in August 27th?

If you look at Gnome and KDE, you'll notice that most of the apps listed in their menus are subdivided by category: Internet, Games, Multimedia, etc. Does that sound difficult to you?? I think it's pretty straightforward. Both even go as far as to not just give the name of the app, but give a short description of what it does (like "Word Processor" next to KWord or AbiWord). I have yet to see something like this in either the Mac OS or Windows (and Windows has a Start Menu).

I believe that if people are open to the experience, they will realize that it's not harder than using Windows or Mac OS. Most commercial distros nowadays don't need to have people going into the command shell to get things done. I believe that if Zammy is straightforward with his customers and gives them a quick rundown of where everything is, they will be just fine. Believe you me, Windows nor Mac OS beat Linux in terms of usability. I get calls from people using Windows, and even my father who has a G5 with Panther on it, asking for help with even the simplest things.

I understand that some people are used to things a certain way, but if you want that, get a new machine with Windows XP or a Mac with Panther. These are older machines that would even struggle with Windows 98, let alone Windows ME (which is one of the worst versions of Windows out there). I believe that most open-source operating systems would excel in this area since coders have been able to take advantage of these procs to the best of their abilities.

I am planning on giving my parents an old PII-233 with SuSE for Internet and word processing when my Dad is busy working on his G5. Let's hope it will be as successful as my son's experience. ;)
 
I'm not convinced that a P-133, much less a 486-100, would be able to run KDE or Gnome to any sort of satisfactory level. They have just as much eye candy as Windows these days.

That's why I suggested xfce as a desktop environment - complete enough to be a full environment, but lightweight enough that it has a fighting chance of being usable on such old hardware. IceWM is even more lightweight, but probably wouldn't be complete enough for most people.
 
How much is 2€, anyway, in US Dollars? What the heck is a "€," anyway?!

Sorry, Zammy, I've been wondering where you're from for a while now... ;)
 
2€ is 2 Euro, or $2.5

Zammy's profile says he is from Germany.
 
Oh, heh, I guess by now I should be a lot more familiar with the site's layout... thanks, Chevy.

Zammy: that is so cheap for so many PCs. You sure there wasn't an amount of drugs involved in that deal as well? :p
 
thanks for all replies. Guess I will take a closer look at FreeBSD. However, I should also make sure there is a german version of the os. I might end up with SUSE 6.x if the language will be a concern. Didn't consider WinME because of the price. I want to offer a working pc for less than 50 Euro (for my friend ElDiablo ;)) and it would be impossible to offer such a price with WinME installed. I think the buyers will mostly be old ppl that have no experience with computers and actually look for a cheap way to get online, print documents and watch the digital pics of their sons. I think a linux package should include all these applications and be stable enough. Don't know how I will be able to make the old ppl understand that crashes are a feature of ms windows. ;)
ElDiablo: I think the guy selling those was hoping for a lot more money. And he didn't offer any delivery. But right now, it seems the guy doesn't want me to pick them up. 4 days and yet no reply to my question when to pick them up.. Do I have any rights to insist on this auction and get the pcs for 2Euro? I don't want to give up on them..
 
What site did you win the auction through? You may want to contact the site owners and explain the situation. I certainly would -- this may make me sound like an anal-retentive ass, but I insisted that the advertised price of "0.39 cents per pound" be honored for bananas at my grocery store once. Some dummy put a decimal point AND a cent sign (instead of a dollar sign, or no decimal at all). That's 39 one-hundredths of a cent. 39/100 cent. About 1/3rd of a cent per pound. They finally honored it after I really, really insisted that they give me their advertised price and I'll bet they double-check every sign they put out now because of that... anyways, the point is, if the auction ended on time, you have a right to the goods, or a complete refund. I would press the site owners for the goods... good luck, and let us know what happens!
 
Ufff, just wanted to download FreeBSD for i386 and it was darn big. Actually the size is no problem for the download, but few of those discs in the old pcs don't have more than 400mb.
So, there is another restriction I didn't mention: it should have something like a kde but not use more than 100mb on the disc.. :( Any way to use FreeBSD then?
I got my hands on msdos 7.10 (didn't know there is such a version) and it's freeware. Now I started thinking: is ms windows 3.1 also freeware? Was searching anywhere to see, if it is still licenced but I didn't find anything. I still have a copy of it and I was wondering if I may install it on the computers. Any ideas?
Windows 3.1 with Dos would be the best os for my taste. I am very familiar with this combination and could provide a much better support. And msdos took around 10mb on the disc and the 11 floppy discs of windows 3.1 won't waste so much space as well.
 
Have a look at VectorLinux that is based off Slackware. Its pretty small and designed for older systems. You can give it a go.

If that doesn't suit you, have a look at Peanut Linux (http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=peanut) or even Damn Small Linux (http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall)

I disagree with saying that Linux is harder to use than Windows. The average Windows users is only interested in word processing, web browsing and email. Linux fills this requirement nicely and doesn't cost a bomb in doing so. All it needs is for someone to set it up and show them how to use it. In the long run, its actually better than Windows since you won't get complaints from people about how the computer is suddenly slowing down, or why certain apps keep crashing (which is going to be the case with Windows ME).

Linux on these machines is definitely the way to go. IMHO anyway.
 
Just another thought, if you're feeling brave, you could even install Gentoo on these machines. Just make sure you use the GRP so that you don't have to compile everything from source. That way you get to control what gets loaded onto the system and you'll be sure that only what you need is installed.
 
Zammy-Sam said:
Lucky me, huh? Got 69 486DX4 100mhz - Pentium 133mhz pcs with graphic cards, network cards and ram for 2€. I am going to get a bunch of keyboards and 14inch crt screens for them and sell them at a price of 49€. This offer goes to ppl living close to me so I can offer them a free delivery and setup. If further options are desired - such as internet connection or networking - I thought of charging a wage of 10€ for every 15min.
Now, what I want to know is, which os would be the best for all these. I was thinking of a linux distribution that is for free and not wasting too much space. Any proposals which would be the best for these old systems and easiest to use?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

You should have been paid to take this trash back home ! :D
 
I don't think it's trash. They still work and they still do anything a pda does and perform even much faster when you use a suitable os such as msdos and windows 3.11. Why throw them away? And to be honest: I think it should be fun to revitalize those pcs. And I decided to use windows 3.11 if there is no licence on them anymore. Just installed windows 3.11 on my VPC and it runs soooo fine. And you have all important applications.
Another thing I will get from those guys: 100 isa network cards with up to 100mbit bnc power. ;) I wonder if the isa bus is fast enough for 100mbit ;)
Anyway, I will check Viros suggestions until I get a reply from microsoft on those licences for windows 3.11. Thanks, Viro!
 
Well, the ISA bus is runs at 16 Mhz with a bus width of 16 bits. So in theory, you could get (16*16/8) 32 MB/s transfer rate via the ISA bus and that should be enough for a 100mbit network card. But I seem to remember the ISA bus having some other problems but I can't remember exactly what at the moment. Its been 6 years since I used an ISA device or had to bother with one.
 
Zammy, if you decide to use Windows 3.x on those PCs, you might want to go over to the following site:

http://www.abzone.tk/

Click on the Calmira link. This is a shell replacement (I believe) for Windows 3.x that give it a more modernish Windows look, such as desktop icons and the like.

Let us know how it turns out.
 
Wow, amazing, nixgeek. I was sorta hoping there is such software to refresh the quite old design of windows 3.1.
Thanks a lot! I will pick up the computers on monday.. Can hardly wait.
 
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