What to do with extra computers?

[sygyzy]

I have a dilemna I imagine many of you share. What do you do with all your extra computers?

Besides my main rig and laptop, I have a computer my dad uses (good, puts it to use), and 2 systems that just sit in my living room.

One is a brand new one I built just because I had extra parts left over from upgrades to my main rig and we couldn't just let a m/b, cpu, and ram sit there without buying it some friends, in the manner of case, dvd-rom, floppy, HD, video card, could we?

The other is a Celeron 900 on a Asus CUSL2 with 512MB of ram. Actually really a good system still, but I have no use for it. I hate to have all this computing power to waste, so how should I use it?

NO SETI - I never got into it, never thought it ws cool or hip. So I am not going to let it sit there and do that.

Why not sell? Believe it or not, I think having extra systems as "backups" is worth more to me than selling it for huge losses. But if you could convince me otherwise...

Any other ideas?

 

[Zebo]

Give it to your favorite charity. Nice write-off with software.

 

[JC]

Go over to the DC forum. There's other cool DC projects besides SETI


JC

 

[jlee]

Network & LAN party!

Dunno...my computer is the only one we have now (7 people in the family), and my dad works at home...needless to say, I'm not on a whole lot =(

Hopefully my dad will be getting a work computer this weekend, so I can go back to tweaking mine -- if I break it, he's stuck..heh

 

[FoBoT]

adopt some computer illiterate kids to use them

 

[Heisenberg]

I use a machine as an mp3 machine connected to my HT setup in the living, and another one as a fileserver so I can have everything in one location and not tie up HD space on main machines.

 

[JackOfHearts]

*looks at row of computers in living room* I think you can never have to many... I have 3 computers in my living room, one in my bedroom, and an iPAQ for the restroom(long live WiFI).... Keep them forever!

 

[rh71]

Well I've done the webserver/ftp server thing and that got old after a few months... took it down cause it's not worth the time/effort/maintenance money anymore. I just have my main box in my office downstairs and this laptop from work for roaming around the house (I'm in bed watching tv now). My fiance brought her machine also when we moved in, but it's sitting in the room next door and hasn't been powered on in 3 months.

 

[minendo]

Run Seti.

 

[stspad]

firewall or server of some sort

 

[GTaudiophile]

Put slackware on it and learn how to use a Linux OS. That's what I did.

 

[NTB]

I wish I had an extra one floating around; I know somebody that I could give it to who would put it to good use - my girlfriend would love an updated, if not necesarily new, rig. Anything's better than the 533 Celery she's runing now.

Nate

 

[sygyzy]

Fileserver is a good idea, but remember, it's the slowest of all my systems and only has a 27GB hard drive (ATA66 at that). I am not going to drop 100's of dollars of 120GB hard drives into it so it could serve up files, when I could better use the large, quick, ata133 hd's in my main 2 gig rigs.

That's what confuses me about people using their high quality machines as simple servers. Wouldn't you want that as your main system?

Write offs - Would be a fat write off with software but I don't know how much of that I could actually write off... Also, I am in a low enough tax bracket as it is, I doubt it'd help taxes that much.

 

[Anubis]

have it run SETI for teh TeAm

 

[Eli]

Give them to me. Seriously. I'll pay shipping.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Put slackware on it and learn how to use a Linux OS. That's what I did.

Ah, here's something else I'd like to do. So there's another extra rig I'd like to have. Anybody care to donate?

Nate

 

[Heisenberg]

Originally posted by: sygyzy
Fileserver is a good idea, but remember, it's the slowest of all my systems and only has a 27GB hard drive (ATA66 at that). I am not going to drop 100's of dollars of 120GB hard drives into it so it could serve up files, when I could better use the large, quick, ata133 hd's in my main 2 gig rigs.

That's what confuses me about people using their high quality machines as simple servers. Wouldn't you want that as your main system?

Write offs - Would be a fat write off with software but I don't know how much of that I could actually write off... Also, I am in a low enough tax bracket as it is, I doubt it'd help taxes that much.

My fileserver is a P133 w/64 megs of RAM with a Promise card and 120 gig drive running FreeBSD. Far from a powerful machine and works just fine. You can get a controller card and HD for just over $100. It's not open to the world, just for my home network.

 

[outriding]

here is what i did with mine

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Heisenberg
My fileserver is a P133 w/64 megs of RAM with a Promise card and 120 gig drive running FreeBSD. Far from a powerful machine and works just fine. You can get a controller card and HD for just over $100. It's not open to the world, just for my home network.

Heck, just keep your eyes open and you may be able to get the controler as a freebie; Maxtor sometimes bundles controllers with their new drives. I bought an 80GB/7200RPM drive last summer that included a Maxtor-badged Promise ATA133 controller for...~150, if I remember correctly. (Yes, I know that's probably high, but a) it was almost a year ago and b) I bought it retail - at CompUSA.)

EDIT: oops, didn't quite read the original post correctly oh well. Point still stands.

Nate

 

[bozack]

I part them out on ebay

 

[sygyzy]

All very good ideas. Keep them coming.

I am not too fond of the idea of a fileserver with a HD that costs more than the entire system!

 

[Spyro]

Can I have them?

 

[Alistar7]

sell them..... if youre not using them why have them? if you have more than one how important is another backup?

 

[yakko]

I have a Athlon 1ghz @1.33 machine with no HDD currently running Knoppix Linux. I have a laptop that I am currently playing with Windows Longhorn M4 build until I get around to putting RedHat 8 back on it. I have an Athlon XP2000+ that is my main machine and an Athlon 1.2 as a secondary. The K6-2 500 is currently doing nothing because it needs a HDD and a CD-Rom. All the machines except the K6-2 are also running G@H. I have a Duron 800 CPU that needs a computer to go with it and I may be inheriting a Celeron 600.

 

[sygyzy]

I spent half the day trying to install Redhat and Mandrake. Both freeze during install or formatting. I hate this!