old pc........ help

[enhanced08]

i have a bunch of old pentium computers, 75mhz IBM, i want to get them to run in parellel or a cluster but first i need to get them to run on their own. i have 32mb of RAM, a 30GB HDD and thats about it! lol

i installed a CD-ROM and found an old HDD with win95 on it. got that to work but win95 was installed with floppys that i don't have. i have win95, 98, 2000, and XP on CD but my version of win95 has no driver for CD-ROM. then the HDD died so now i have a blank HDD, a network card, an old outdated BIOS, and nothing else.

i don't think the BIOS will run CD-ROMs because i can't get anything to read from it. i tried booting from CD-ROM and it has a read disk error.

any ideas? i was thinking get a different pc and install an OS using that pc and then transfer the HDD over.

thanks!

[edfair]

The CD drivers supplied with a 98 emergency boot disk will work with 95.
But better than that would be to use a 98 boot disk to transfer the 95 install stuff to the hard drive and install from there.
But us a 95 boot disk to fdisk and format the hard drive before you use the 98 to transfer the stuff, since 98 has a media descriptor that some 95 doesn't like.

[enhanced08]

ok, i have a new problem (if this needs moved, mods please move it). i have 1 new HDD and one fairly new with winXP on it. if i take out all HDDs and boot up pc it has a black screen with '1962' in the left corner. any button you hit just repeats this '1962'. i looked it up and thats a HDD error. both HDDs i put in come up with this same error. nothign else will happen.

any ideas? this pc only has 32mb of RAM so would that have any effect on it? like running winXP?

[mb26]

running XP on 32 mb of ram i would think is impossible? you have no chance what-so-ever of running XP on a 75mhz PC with 32mb ram
i have a 400mhz cel with 288mb of ram (256 + 32) and i took the 256 out a while back and windows ME (which is *much* less intensive than XP) took about 5 mins just to load and calm down. infact i turned it off before it even did i think.
if you want it to run as a cluster then wont you need an OS that supports parrallel computing? (linux). linux would probably run better aswell, they crash a lot less and you wont have to deal with the constant problems of spyware/adware/hijackings/viruses that windows gets ; which could seriously cripple pcs that slow.

if you have lots of the PCs then can't you swap the ram from one machine onto another (giving 64mb (or more if there are more slots) ) atleast while you install? i dont know if you want to spend *any* money atall
there may be a bios update you can download for the motherboard..

i'm interested in what your trying to do, i'd like to try it myself so keep us posted i hope your sucessfull


i dont know if you want to spend *any* money on this or not, but you might want to think of upgrading the CPUs if they are socket 7 CPUs.. you should be able to upgrade atleast to a 200mhz cpu, perhaps a 233MMX, and possibly a K6-2 or K6-2+ (latter is unlikely)
also, you could get some more ram. smaller quantities generally sell for dirt cheap.
if you could get a batch off ebay it would cost you hardly anything for 100% or 200% speed increase.. here for example (this would need your mobo to support the MMX chips.. its worth finding out as the non-mmx seem rarer).
how many computers do you have?
$10 for 12 cpus is nothing. to anyone.

you could get a lot of 10 32mb sticks of ram for $15 here or some which have beeen tested for $5 more.

is there a specific purpose you have in mind for this cluster or are u just doing it for the hell of it?

[enhanced08]

ok, i didn't think it was possibe to run XP on them, but i tried anyway. i got one of the HDDs and put win98 on it with my pc at home. i'll take it tomorrow and hope it will work in the old one.

mb26, the cpus are pentiums, i don't know what socket they would be, i would have to do some looking to find out. the 32mb of RAM is with all slots filled! 8mb x 4 = 32mb.

i do have linux to run them as a cluster, but i also want to try parellel computing with them if i can figure out how to do it.

once i get one up and running i'll get the others too and hopefully have something worth while.

i'm doing this both for the challenge and for the hell of it. i think it would be pretty sweet to do.

i'll keep you posted.

[noby]

I would :
1 - hook each HDD up on a working system with CD-support
2 - fdisk and format each HDD with a Win95 CD or floppy
3 - install Win 95 on each one
4 - put them in the oldies and work on from there
You could find Win 95 img'es at :

http://www.peteweb.com/phorum/list.php?f=1

good luck and let's hear from you !

noby

[budbd]

So, what is the idea behind this? ARe you adding all the machines together, adding up the mhz to have a 600 or 700 mhz processing speed?
I guess that does this mean that six 500 mhz machines all hooked together contitute a 3 ghz processing power same as a 3 ghz single machine?
Or could someone rig up six one ghz machines to get six ghz operating speed? Of course, I am sure there is a limit to that even if it were possible.

[enhanced08]

well i have given up on it i took one of the HDDs and tried to install win95 but it would work for some reason so i installed win98 instead. took the drive to school and put it in the old machines and nothing happened. all that was on the screen after POST was a black screen with "Disk Read Error" i think it has something todo with the HDD being 20GB. i think i read somewhere that older machines have problems with lots of memory space but i could be wrong.

i have tried every possible thing i can think of to get this to work but it doesn't look good.