Quoting Gary Montcalm (garym@shreve.net):
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my post about the feasibility of 
> attempting to run a 10/100 ethernet card on our ancient 486. I've 
> decided to upgrade to a faster machine for Samba.
> 
> One more question on this matter, however: We already have a 
> Macintosh Performa 5400/180 doing IP routing via Mac OS 9.1 and 

486/33 will handle most modem or DSL routing just fine.
A 486/50 could handle a T1 ok.

Keep in mind that ipfilter rules will start to cost computer speed.


The Mac performa ...

MacOS 9 is a dog with no real multiprocessing.  OS/X I don't
fully trust yet per security.  Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and
coming, FreeBSD all run on it.  Make a choice and try it.


Or dump it and move on.
I just assembled a $80 Mobo (with a "free" 900MHz athalon) and
$80 of REALLY good DDR RAM into a spare PC case with a scrap
4GB disk for boot and blew $90 on a 7200RPM 60GB drive. Oh, and
$70 for a PS.

Mobo has built in SIS NIC, USB, PS/2, sound, etc.

so: case, old basic VGA card were free for me (servers need
no video, in a proper world).
Mobo w/ 900MHz AMD $80
Quality RAM        $90
Antec PowerSup:    $70
BIG disk           $90
extra fans         $20
                 ------
                  $350


So for likely less money that your time is worth researching
this, you can have a 2002 speed machine (I haven't upgraded
the CPU to 1.8GHz cause I have no need, yet).  So either screw
around for several hours to get scrap machines running in your
business, or just get a new damn machine.