I have an old 386-based computer with a 450Mb hard drive and a CDROM player. My son was using ot to play educational games, but has lost all interest in it. I checked various websites and organizations that take old computers, but they all request that the computers be at least a Pentium 1.
Any suggestions as to what I can do with this unit? I’d like to put it use somewhere in the house, but I’m not sure how.
A barebones Linux firewall, maybe? MP3 server?
I have sorta the same problem with a 486 DX4…
Keep it to play all the old classic computer games, especially the Ultima series!!
FTR, this was the first (and, so far, only) computer I bulit myself.
I won’t even mention the 8088-based Leading Edge Model ‘D’ with a 10Mb (no, that isn’t a mis-type) hard drive and 5.25" floppy drive that’s shoved under the bed. 
What operating system is it running? Can you network it? A 450MB drive isn’t bad as a backup device (as long as it isn’t mostly full from the OS). Otherwise, um, not much…
Running MSDOS 6.22 & Windows 3.1.
I’m not sure it can be networked.
IIRC, there used to be a home security system that ran on a computer. It would be programmed to turn lights on and off and so forth.
So, in other words, your old computer has been replaced by a device that can be bought at Targets for ten bucks? That pretty much tells you all that you need to know, Blue
um…a boat anchor?
Doorstop, footrest, litter box, the suggestions are endless. But seriously, you could use it as a Linux-based firewall (if you can find an ISA network card, I suppose), or just use it to play around with Linux.
-brianjedi
Another vote for Linux.
A few years ago (1995 or 1996), I donated my old 8088 w/10 meg HD (which was a lot back then), dual 5.25 floppies, and all 518 K memory, with monitor and keyboard (there was no such thing as a mouse with this baby)… to a local trade high school. While it was ok to show the classes where computers came from, it was eventually used in the Electrician’s classes as a voltage regulator. I’m not sure if it’s still running there or not.
At least it wasn’t as hard to get rid of as it was to rid myself of the old Tandy Coco. That one I had to sneak into someone’s back seat of their car when they moved. 
Find your local amateur radio club and offer to donate it for use as an APRS machine.
Automatic Position Reporting System is big these days. And most of the programs will run on an 8088.
F disk the hard drive, reload with DOS, get an old programming book, and have fun designing your own games.
Or load Linux. It’s a cool OS.
Paint the sucker tie-dye type colors and put in a corner of your den with only PONG playing on it. Great for parties.
If you have any friends or acquaintences who are (or know of someone) who is on an extremely limited budget, donate it to them. They can do a limited amount of the Internet (people running Win 3.x visit my websites every day—they are still out there!) and they can do email. A few years ago I had an ancient 386 laptop with 4 megs of RAM. I was able to design simple web pages, pick up email, and surf the 'Net (in a limited way) thanks to the Win 3.x version of the Opera browser! Wow! (I used my EarthLink account, thanks to the Win 3.x software diskettes EarthLink sent me. I believe EarthLink has “limited” accounts for $10 a month.)
If you know a “starving student” they can use the computer as a word processor. I have a friend who still uses an ANCIENT Macintosh (I believe it was made in 1992 or earlier?). It runs an old version of Word and connectes to an old printer. She writes her class papers on it. (I gave her a less ancient 80 MHz Power Mac for Christmas, which she uses for the Internet, but last I heard, she still used the ancient Mac for her word processing.)
What **yosemitebabe[/b said. A friend gave me an old 8088 when I started grad school, and if nothing else, it certainly allowed me to write many, many research papers in the comfort of my own apartment rather than in the chaos that is the university computer lab at term paper time. (in WP 5.1 for DOS, but that was perfectly fine for my purposes! I could even check my e-mail from home on the darn thing, albeit on a 2400 baud modem.)
Donate it to the closest school. Act angry if they’re the least bit ungrateful.
The would be ungratefull. They can do nothing with it, and it will end up costing them money to get rid of it. Don’t think that it is rare for people to try to unload their old, old computers on them.
However, my highschool had a couple of old comodore PET’s and apple IIE’s that I loved. It was great to be able to do what ever I wanted on them and have no one care about the consequences. Also, those very old computers just felt so much more intimate. You were closer to the hardware itself when the thing booted up directly to a programing prompt. Their are just so many layers between you and the machine now, it is uncomfortable.
BTW, highschool was back in 1999.
The 386 was the first Intel CPU generation that could run Linux at all. The 286 couldn’t handle memory protection or multithreading, so Linux would have to be mutilated into something distinctly non-Linux to run on anything pre-386. – Useless history fact for the day.
I vote for Linux, but don’t expect it to run a GUI at all. 450 megs is good, and with Linux most of that will be free if you install packages intelligently. A barebones firewall or router would be a good idea: don’t even hook a monitor or keyboard up to it, just connect it to a network once the OS is installed and configured. It’d be a good way to learn advanced Linux techniques, but is not recommended for the Linux newbie. If you barely know what Linux is, for the love of god install Mandrake or Gentoo on a real machine. Putting Slackware or DIY Linux on a 386 isn’t for those recently weaned from XP.
ummmm, pardon, but why would you go to all that trouble when a single CD-R holds more than that? Dedicate that much space, electricity, debugging time, possible network card investment to what is essentially a 45-pound floppy?