Anyone know where I can get an old operating system?

To test a spare PC that I have acquired.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I have an old PC (Venturis FX 5200), which I assume is 200 MHz. It was stripped of its operating system by its last user so I can't boot it up to have a look at it. Obviously it's not worth anything but I would like to get it going as I may have a use for it.

Does anyone know where I could find a (free) copy of Windows? I don't want to go buying a copy of Windows because it would cost me more than the PC is worth. As I understand it Windows 98 was the first version that could be installed without DOS so it would probably have to be 98 or better.

[encyclo]

You can't get any Windows version for free unless you are pirating it: which is obviously not ideal.

Why not try Linux? You'll need a distribution which runs well on older hardware, but 200MHz is largely sufficient. You could install something like DeLi Linux [delilinux.berlios.de] with the "IceWM" Windows manager. It's rather basic and old-fashioned as Linux goes these days, but you can use the machine to run Apache/PHP/MySQL and you'll have an excellent development server. I use a 166MHz machine for this, and it runs very swiftly and does the job perfectly.

[DrDoc]

As I understand it Windows 98 was the first version that could be installed without DOS so it would probably have to be 98 or better.

...without needing to install DOS first you mean, since all Windows versions are DOS based.

All you need is a boot disk. Then you can install anything from 95 on up.

[Essex_boy]

People often forget windows is a shell and not an operating system.

[AZEvil]

Sometimes there are universities selling off their old junk (computers, software, etc.) when they upgrade. You may want to see if there is one somewhere around you where you could pick up a copy for a buck or two. At least you'd be closer to being legal than pirating it.

[bakedjake]

BDW, grab a copy of the free BeOS personal edition. Easy to setup and install. And fun to play with.