PC Upgrade

Works like a champ - Just Slow. My suggestion is increase Memory as much as possible and use Windows 98 SE. 98SE utilizes Memory (RAM) better and is faster. Check your Hard drive for enough space before installing.

yeah, and treat yourself to a fast hd controller and fast hd if you can...

Viable yes but you can pick up pentuim 133 for $25-$50 which would run that operating system a lot better and have more memory/cdrom/larger drive and could use the 486 drive as a second drive.

Glad to see someone still has a 486! You have already got some very good advice about RAM and hard drive/controller. I would also suggest, As far as WIN9X is concerned and the loved 486 there are noticeable performance changes between each version. As far as performance is concerned 95upgrade is the best. Unfortunately you will find this version will be the hardest to work with as far as any current programs are concerned. In addition to the fact there is no USB support if you are into that. The last version of 95 that did have USB support will work better with marginal performance differences but better app support. WIN98 will have a more noticeable difference to performance. A new hard drive and controller will minimize this. You can runjust about everything out there as far as apps. The processor speed will kill you now as far as app support. I personally have WIN98SE on my IBM486 DX4 100 with 64meg RAM, 10GIG drive with a promise ATA66 controller, it performs rather well. I personally would not recommend WINME. As pointed out earlier you can buy a Pentium 133 or 166 so cheap now. Far less then a new hard drive and controller. Plus it frees you from the processor speed limitation as far as apps are concerned. It really boils down to what you do with your PC? Last thought does your 486 have PCI slots? That would be one of the biggest questions, not so much processor but MB support.

Just to add abit, I had a Pentium 233MMX system. Windows 98 SE was at least 10% slower than Windows 95.

If you can, find a copy of Windows 95 "C" (2.5)
This version has both USB and FAT32 support.

Other than keeping the hardware running, I have to question why upgrade?

As has been stated in other answers, you can find Pentium 1 and II PCs for under $50 every day.

This site has some Gateway PIIs for $40
http://www.pcliquidator.com/

Chas

The first computer I built (still have) is a 486dx66 running Windows 95C and I love it with win95c I get away from having to have a big H/D and can still do everything I want to do on the system I getting ready now to incorperate the system into my home network I already have 4 systems on it, but I do want my old reliable on the network also

Go for a bigger hard drive, upgrade the memory as high as possible and that should be just fine.

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