I wouldn't want to use Win3.1 for this. I suppose an old  3.11 version of
Netscape or Mosaic  would work...and maybe there is one for OPERA. I am
sure you could find something but it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

What Processor do you have or can upgrade to ? The answer to that will
answer your questions...anything DX266 or above is usable and you can run
Win95 pretty well.Or if you  have 32 megs of RAM you can run NT4. Eight
megs of RAM won't cut it for anything...even Win 3.1. I know ..I lived with
8 megs of RAM on a  486 DX33 for a year back in 1993 or was it 92.

You need to upgrade your RAM to at least 32 megs. you should be able to
find 32 to 64 megs of RAM for your 486 for anywhere from 10 to 30 dollars
on EBAY.
You should also be able to find a DX266 CPU or higher for 5 to 20 U.S
dollars. If you have a DX266 with 64 megs of RAM you can easily run a
stripped down NT4 Workstation SP6a with OPERA as your browser and email
program.  Such a machine would be able to use a small simple word processor
or spreadsheet program and assorted  utilities. The things you couldn't do
would be graphics, games, multimedia, java browsers, mp3 ...obvious stuff
like that.

I still have that old 1993 AST Advantage Pro 486 that I have upgraded with
a Kingston overdrive 586133 CPU and 64 megs of RAM both of which I bought
on EBAY. I run NT4 Workstation SP6a on it. I use this as a backup NAT
server for my LAN running Sygate 3.1 as the NAT and  Zone Alarm Pro as the
firewall. Works great. I could and have also used it to run a Linux router,
ftp server and firewall.

If nothing else you will learn a lot trying to find a use for it. Anybody
can take brand new components and turn it into something useful but it
takes, skill, knowledge and imagination to take a old worthless 486
and  turn it into something useful with little or not money.

Have Fun!

Rode
The NOSPIN Group

>I have seen several folks putting #486 back to work, it seems like
>a good idea, if only using it for E-mail. My question ,are there any
>"dial up apps" "E-mail apps" and browsers out there that will run
>on dos 6.2 win 3.1 and only 8 megs ram, the HDD will hold 1.2GB
>Thanks for any info.
>Charles Alsop
>[log in to unmask]
>
>Charley
>http://users.tminet.com/alsopc

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