Fiiting USB Sockets to a 486?

F

Fatzoid

New Member
Hi. I'm ignorant.

I have an ancient 486 at home, probably about 20 years old. I bought it secondhand thirteen years ago and amazingly it's still going strong. But the thing is, as well as being funereally slow, it only has a hard drive and a 3.5" floppy-drive, which means that if I want to email something I've created on it to someone or upload it to a website, I have to save it onto a floppy disk, find an internet-connected PC somewhere and plug an external floppy-drive into it. Increasingly I find that when I do this, modern internet-connected PCs can't get their heads around the format I'm using.

I don't have a spare £400 for a new PC, so could somebody please tell me: would it be feasible to fit my old 486 with USB sockets, allowing me to use memory sticks? Or would a 486 be incapable of comprehending what a USB socket is?

Thanks for your help, shipmates.
 
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What computer do you have? If it has a spare PCI slot, unlikely considering its age and PCI was not about until 1993, you could add one of these...

To be very honest though, it really isnt worth expanding onto it, even with a simple expansion card, it be worth your money to get something like this used Intel Pentium 4 desktop for $39. Not only does it have a miles faster cpu, it also runs Windows XP, has more RAM, a CD drive and USB expansion for memory cards and a floppy disk so all of your floppy data can be easily read. Just a thought though :)
 
It's a Mitac 486. When I start it up, I get some info flash onscreen about Award Software Inc. ('Energy Star Ally') - and the main software on the PC is Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which I'm sure you'll find hilarious.

I've been struggling along with this old log-burning PC for 13 years but it's seen me alright, I hate to contemplate putting it out with the garbage (a bit too much like Eskimos putting their old grandparents out for the polar bears to eat).

Mind you, if having it upgraded with USB-socket facilities would be stupidly expensive, maybe I should reconsider....

(By the way, I don't normally spell the word 'fitting' as 'fiiting'. Momentary brain failure.)
 
For starters, Windows 3.11 did not support USB, in fact it never heard of USB so even if you could get an ISA adaptor the OS would not run it.
 
The 486 should be able to run Windows 95, 95SE and Xp with Fat 32 and you possibly could use a serial to usb converter cable if it had supporting software.

It might work, nothing is impossible.
 
The first version of Windows 95 did not support USB, support only came with with later versions of 95 and proper support with 98.
 
Whoops! I stand corrected 486 will not run XP.... but 95/95B ok but you will need a DX2-66 cpu 16 meg ram minimum requirement to run 98.
TFT is correct on his statement.
 
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