I haven't installed an OS yet, so I can't get more detailed system specs.

-733 MHz AMD CPU (socket 7)

-32MB SD-RAM (two slots, one empty, I'll buy more if I can do something useful with the machine)

-PCI 2MB Video Card from around 1999, no AGP slot, the motherboard has onboard video, but I heard the onboard video was awful to the extent of being better off without it.

-Standard D-Link Ethernet Card.

-Old ISA soundcard.

The motherboard has 3 PCI slots, one ISA slot, and one empty mini-riser slot (for a modem I think). The motherboard also has onboard video (as said above) onboard USB, Parallel and serial ports.

It already has a floppy drive, and I'll borrow my main computers CDROM drive to install the OS with.

I believe the machine was originally a Linux Router. I'm really only a Windows person, so I'm not interested in sticking a Linux distro on it.

So there's my question, what OS is best suited for this machine? I'm pretty open to any version of Windows. And any idea what this would be useful for?

Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 should work great on there... If you added a bit more RAM, you could probably install Windows 98 too!

I would add some RAM and then put Windows 2000 on it. Nice little extra computer. Or you coul put Server 2000/2003(iffy) on it to be a server in your home network. I have a P3 800 with 128mb and 4mb video, works fine for a firewall for my home network using MS's ISA server 2000.

I would recommend to install Windows 98.

If you do get more RAM:

Existing 32 MB ram = Windows 95/NT4

64 MB = Windows 98

128 MB = Windows 2000

192/256 MB = Windows XP/2003

I would say go with 98 lite. Litepc.com - 98 lite

are you sure its a 733mhz chip and not a 133mhz chip as far as i am aware the last socket 7 processors were around 550mhz and were the amd k6-2 also the 733mhz speed doesnt tie with the rest of the hardware e.g. 32mb ram it would probobly be 64mb+ if it was a 733mhz.

I recommend you learn linux,with those specs you'll get good speed out of your comp but still have a modern,updated stable os....and for full responsiveness you could run entirely from the console,you can do everything fomr the console anyway,and games are going to run porrly anyway if your video card.That being said those are similar specs to an xbox with linux on it and it can run in X quite well.

Or if you really don't want to use linux,grab windows 95 or 98 and strip it down to a bare minimum...a stripped down windows 9x is very fast,and if you do it right it will be quite stable.Start with 98lite(pro version),and do a micro install,and then google around and you should be able to get it running good.

If it realy is 733mhz, then I would reccomend a ram upgrade to at least 128mb and run XP

When my system died a few months ago (**** lightning) I was gaming off of a 750mhz, 128mb, 20gb, Radeon 7000 rig. Was a duron though.

Throw on Mandrake 10 and make a server/firewall for your LAN. Or windows 2000, and make an FTP server out of it.

You'll need more ram to even make windows 95 run well

I have a pentium II, 233Mhz with 32MB ram running 2k. It is kind of slow, but good enough for web browsing and office work.