"slow computer" enthusiasts?

[WilsonTung]

Naturally, most people seem to enjoy building faster and faster machines. But does anybody here like tweaking the heck out of older systems to get the most out of them?

For some reason I really like pushing the limits on my Pentium II 266 MHz laptop. Maybe I feel special attachment to it because its the first computer I paid for completely by myself (bought it used last year from Dellauctions). I just like getting it to do things it was never intended to do.

For instance, the Dell Support website strongly recommends against running Windows XP on this machine. But I put XP on it anyway and it runs fine. I've tweaked the interface for maximum ease of use and response time. I've winnowed all the useless stuff like MSN explorer and messanger.

And at the end of the day, I'm amazed that this machine runs as well as it does. I can play MPEG4 videos, listen to MP3s, edit the pictures I took with my digital camera, and program in C and Java. All with a machine that was made in October of 1998, almost three and a half years ago.

 

[Scootin159]

Got a Pentium II 333Mhz system that I pulled out of the dorm dumpster. Is running a great file server for me. Haven't really done much else with tweaking it though. My motherboard caps out @ 333mhz (no 100Mhz FSB ), so outside of replacing that there isn't much I can do for overclocking.

 

[bluemax]

!!!!!!!!! :Q
A P2-333 in a dumpster?!?!?!?!?!?
That's a very nice workstation! Better than many at my college!

 

[Scootin159]

<< !!!!!!!!! :Q
A P2-333 in a dumpster?!?!?!?!?!?
That's a very nice workstation! Better than many at my college! >>



I know...I think it was thrown out because the case was trashed. Like as in I had to get out a hammer & pliers to pull out the components. Works great though (ran like 15 disk checks on that HDD though, figured there must've been damage considering the conditions of the case, but it seems fine).

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

What was on the HD?

 

[LongCoolMother]

<< What was on the HD? >>



you are certainly naugthyus you boobyus maximus

 

[Scootin159]

<< What was on the HD? >>



we looked at it long enough to figure out who's it was & get a good laugh. He had some 'interesting' pictures on his desktop, along with an equally 'interesting' IE history. I don't think anyone has told him 'bout it yet, and he has no way of ever really figuring it out as it's in a new case now & he would never reconize it anyways.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

hehe interesting story. i should go dumpster diving sometime, theres a unisys building around here, i could find some interesting stuff.

anyways, i have a p233mmx which is waiting to be a firewall/router/server/etc, but i cant get both nic's workin yet (damn ne2k isa nics), i got one working, then the other, but then the first one quit working. irq/io conflicts i guess, if i dont get it sorted out i'll proabably just plunk down 15 bucks for a pci nic.

got debian woody installed on it, and blackbox, galeon, bitchx, gaim, most of the normal stuff thats on my main machine. its a bit slow, but definitely fast enough to be useable as a regular desktop. but when i get back on my duron 750 it feels like a rocket ship

 

[Windogg]

Drop a bigass heatsink on it, strapon a big fan, and OC the heck out of it

BTW, the webserver that is hosting the pics is a old P233-MMX (MMX makes the web go 3x faster right? ) which I put together from junk parts picked from various "dead" systems.

I just love it when people throw away "obsolete" systems because it just means I get more toys to play with.

Windogg

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< Drop a bigass heatsink on it, strapon a big fan, and OC the heck out of it

BTW, the webserver that is hosting the pics is a old P233-MMX (MMX makes the web go 3x faster right? ) which I put together from junk parts picked from various "dead" systems.

I just love it when people throw away "obsolete" systems because it just means I get more toys to play with.

Windogg >>


hahhaha seeing an sk6 on a socket 7, next to some simm slots is awesome

 

[Scootin159]

watercooled 486dx's guys?

Realalistically I think what's keeping the whole linux market alive is all these 'obsolete' computers. How many people around here have a linux server running on an old P2 or even pentium system that someone gave away for practically nothing.

 

[WilsonTung]

<< hehe interesting story. i should go dumpster diving sometime, theres a unisys building around here, i could find some interesting stuff. >>



Hmm... I don't think you'll find much if you're on the east coast. ECDC and Blue Bell seem to keep their old machines around for kicks - I interned there a few years ago and all the old boxes had been converted into testbeds for various devices... some even had Linux installed.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<<

<< hehe interesting story. i should go dumpster diving sometime, theres a unisys building around here, i could find some interesting stuff. >>



Hmm... I don't think you'll find much if you're on the east coast. ECDC and Blue Bell seem to keep their old machines around for kicks - I interned there a few years ago and all the old boxes had been converted into testbeds for various devices... some even had Linux installed. >>


hm, interesting. i'm in iowa, i'm not even sure what exactly goes on at the unisys building here, but i do know unisys makes some pretty high end stuff . oh well

 

[WarCon]

Heck a friend of mine pulled a system (with Win98SE and Corel Draw 8.0 disks) out of a dumpster for me at the Air Force Academy (his company does odd jobs for them). It must of been some cadet there, who must of just bought a new one. The only thing wrong with this computer was the video card wasn't seated. It was a K6-2 400 with a 7gig hard drive (which later failed but was still under warranty so we got that replaced for free.......) It was workstation level quality parts, but heck it made one of my friends a really nice email machine.

Dumpsters rule............

..........................edit............................
Only had like 15 days left on the warranty of the hard drive before it failed. That was nice of it to do it before the warranty ran out...........

 

[Skaven]

Hehe.. glad I'm not the only one! A while back I got a K63+ 450mhz for my aging Asus P55T2P4 board. Tweaked the heck out of it, and it actually ran pretty well as an extra gaming system! I've decided to let the K63 stretch its legs on a better board. Super-7 here we come! I'm 'downgrading' the P55T2P4 to a 233mmx and putting linux on it. It'll be my router/web-server for now.

There are a few ancient laptops here at the office. Dell LM 166mmx - works great with Redhat! No fancy windows managers though. Its fun getting the old hardware to work.

Heck - until I get my 233mmx router/server up and running, my current router is a 486 upgraded to an 83mhz pentium! Remeber those intel upgrade chips? Hell yea! VESA Local Bus all the way! Its running FreeSCO off of a floppy.

 

[ProviaFan]

My "old" computer is a Celeron 500mhz. But I also have an AMD K6-2 400MHz processor on a dead Socket7 board which is sitting in a box in the closet...maybe it's time to fix that up and dig it out of the closet
Also, I have a Cyrix 200mhz chip in my drawer, which, afaik, still works, though I don't have a mobo for it.

 

[CTho9305]

weak
486 dx33 (pic) our school has recently thrown out so many pentiums that this happened :Q .

i could post links to the other machines... 486 66, two p90s, a p133, but the kid running them has some "content" on them that might result in me having an Anandtech Moderator quote in my sig

 

[KenAF]

This is funny....

I left an 800MHz Athlon system out on the [busy] street last week and it took two days for someone to pick it up....

I left a Celeron 300->450Mhz system, complete, save for hard drive, on the street about six months ago and the dumpster picked it up with all the garbage...

I left a P2 450 system out on the street two months ago and someone carried it off the same day...

 

[Scootin159]

<< This is funny....

I left an 800MHz Athlon system out on the [busy] street last week and it took two days for someone to pick it up....

I left a Celeron 300->450Mhz system, complete, save for hard drive, on the street about six months ago and the dumpster picked it up with all the garbage...

I left a P2 450 system out on the street two months ago and someone carried it off the same day... >>



Where do you live that you are just leaving systems out on the street? I'll have to come by and pick a few of them up for you!!!

 

[CZroe]

See BP6.com
These guys have gotten the BP6 Dual Celeron board to run PIII Coppermines in dual configurations (WAAAAY to many hacks for my taste)
My favorite system that I'm running is an Abit BP6 w/ 2x Celeron ("A" version of course) 366Mhz CPUs clocked at 550Mhz (100Mhz FSB for specified standard AGP/PCI/Memory speeds). VisionTek GeForce2 GTS-V w/ GTS BIOS flash & GTS clock speeds, 512MB CAS2 Micron memory (PC133 running at 100Mhz), 1 IBM 10GB boot drive, 2 Western Digital 10GB RAID drives, and 1 Western Digital 80GB storage drive. With it's abundance of IDE ports, I've got my Zip, Tape, CD-RW, and 4 hard drives in addition to my floppy
3Com, Intel, and LinkSys network cards are all in use (I'm going to set it up as a VPN server) as well as a Hollywood Magic+ MPEG 1 & 2 decoder for TV out. This thing kicks ass (I'm leaving tons of its hardware out)

 

[sharkeeper]

I like running old benchmarks on new systems. Checkit Version 4.x detects my Athlon XP at 1950 (actual frequency) as a 11558 MHz or something i486!

Older versions of Sandra are funny, but a lot of Win32 stuff causes problems with newer hardware especially over 512 MB of ram.

Anyone remember the CORE disk test?

I remember the old norton speedisk for dos in the 486 days. I created a 4 MB ram disk and was floored at how fast it could be defragged and scanned. My X15's are respectively faster given 8MB cache. :Q

Cheers!