One of my coworkes told me a while ago that she had an old computer she was going to throw out, but I asked if she'd give it to me. Nothing special, but I cleared and repartioned the disk and now have a linux rig. Then she found out her sister had to old computers and she decided to give them to me, too. My parents were already mad at me for having 4 comps, so I kept these in my car's trunk until I got a chance to check them out without my parents knowing.

I bring in the one to hook up and am completely confused by the back. There is one port that looks like a ps/2, but it's about twice as big in diameter. Luckily, she gave me 2 keyboards for it with the comps. I couldn't find anywhere to plug in a mouse, so I booted without one. I turn it on and it was win98. I navigated to control panel -> system with alt and arrow keys and found out it has 64mb of RAM (twice as much as my linux rig).

What's the deal? Was this just a freaking awesome computer in it's day, or did the comp companies do some expirimenting with new keyboard ports?

if it has like 5 or six pins, it is an older port. I have some of them keyboards and mice around here still. There are converters for them too (though they may be hard to find anymore).

Oh, okay.

And slightly unrelated, I started tearing it apart. The cd drive is connected to something about the size of duct tape. I think the hard drive(or maybe floppy) has it too. What is it, and how do I unconnect it? DO I just pull hard or is there a button somewhere?

are you talking about IDE cable?

It's six pins, often called an AT keyboard connector. In generally, it's software-compatible with scanset 2.

After a google image search, yes, it is. Thank you.

I can't believe how many screws are in this thing...

For an IDE cable, just gently pull it out.

Thanks, Kerm.

I think I found 2 RAM slots, but both are empty? It can't be RAMless... I booted it. And it said I had 64mb... Do you thinkl it's built into the mobo, somewhere, or am I just look at the wrong place? I can't seem to find it anywhere. I've added RAM before, I'm pretty sure those are RAM slots...

EDIT: Or... maybe I was looking at the wrong place. There are 4 slots next to the two about 3/4 of the size. Two of them have something in them. Is that the RAM, there? The big slots say DM1 and DM2. I can't read the smaller ones.

The ram will be a long board, roughly 3 inches (give or take), but only about .75 inches tall (again, give or take) It will be in a slot with clips on either end of the slot

Yeah, that's what I thought...

Anyway, someone just told me that her comp wouldn't connect to the internet (dial-up) and tech support said she needed a new modem. I gave her the card out of mine with the two phone jacks on it. That is the modem, right?

Yup, that's the modem.

yeah, two jacks that a phone line hooks into is a modem.

Thanks, Tari.

I have had problems with modems randomly going out before...

Hmmm.... This is really odd. I took the RAM out of the old one and went to put it in my other comp, and it's about 3/4ths the size of my other comp's RAM. The comp I took the RAM from had 2 empty slots that were the same size of my good comp's RAM. Are/were there different physical sizes of RAM, and is it possible that the motherboard came with slots for both?

Depending on how old the old comp really is, it's a definite possibility. My old one has slots for both PC133 and DDR RAM, so it could.

Well, the thing is, it can't really be too old. It was made for Win98.

actually, it can be 8 years old then, that is ancient.

There are at least 3 I know of, but I think there are 4.

Think there were three types competing before PC100/133 (33? 66?). then DDR/DDR2 came along.
The PC100/133 fit in the same slot (I believe), don't know about any possible predecessors.