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What to do with my old pc....

I have an old Compaq 5BW284...Here are the specs:

Pentium 3 850MHz
256MB SDRAM PC100
40GB Hard Drive
Onboard Graphics, Audio (i really don't know how I lived with this for 4 years....)
Ethernet PCI Card..
two broken drives, dvd-rom and cd-rw
17" Compaq CRT MV740
Floppy Drive

I thought I would post this here since you all tend to be really good with this stuff. I already got a new pc (see
this thread), but I want to put my old pc to use.. My budget is $200 for possible upgrades. I was thinking maybe moving to an Athlon XP or a Sempron, but I don't think there's Socket A boards with SDRAM. What do you guys think?
 
Replace the optical drives with a single combo drive up the ram to 512 pc133 install xp and use it as a backup system.
 
get a lot of hard drive space and network it with your other pc. use if to store crap like a load of mp3s = never turn it off either.... then backup your dvd movies to it=== i think im getting toward a meadia server recommendation. Or turn it into a firewall/webserver server...
if your a gamer create a server out of your fav game... quake 3? halflife? ut?
 
Originally posted by: islandtechengineers
get a lot of hard drive space and network it with your other pc. use if to store crap like a load of mp3s = never turn it off either.... then backup your dvd movies to it=== i think im getting toward a meadia server recommendation. Or turn it into a firewall/webserver server...
if your a gamer create a server out of your fav game... quake 3? halflife? ut?
 
If you don't need it donate it to a school. They are always in need of computers and such. Plus you can take it as a tax deduction.

Sorry I didn't see your note at the bottom of your page. It sounds like you do want to keep it. Like others said, put in some new optical drives and network it to your new computer. It's easy now with the wireless routers and adapters.
 
If you have the bandwidth, a game server is fun. But unless you have T1 or something close, dont bother. cable isnt fast enough.
 
I found an Intel Mobo that supports sdram and a p4 processor....

Link

I was thinking maybe i could get a new motherbaord, a new processor, and optical drive. Would this work out ?
 
Sell it on ebay, use the cash you get towards a mobile Athlon XP system. Then overclock that bad boy til your heart's content 🙂
 
don't throw your $$ away on this thing. Use it as is, it's fine for most apps. Do not buy a MB and P4 CPU then cripple it with SDRAM. R
 
I have a P3 box for running ganes that don't like XP, since I have old favorites like Jagged Alliance 2 (playing the Urban Chaos user total conversion now) and games I never got around to playing like The Longest Journey (compatibility mode didn't help a bit on my system).
 
Originally posted by: CeilingHoles
Originally posted by: gf4200isdabest
Guys, let's be serious here. there is only one good thing to do with it...



the link doesn't work for me. I get a page that says "File Not Found"

that's fine, have you seen office space? he didn't really mean it.

anyways, it's pretty much junk. i wouldn't try to upgrade off of it. either give it away to a family member. or keep around for casuel use. and move on.
 
Wipe the Hard Drive with a low level format and then install Linux (any version) and see how computers and software were meant to work.
 
put linux on it and turn it into a router! 😀....that's the only thing my uncle's old P3 866-based Gateway box is good for...well and a webserver. It'd definately be a good box to toy around with Linux on.
 
Hey don't knock it. We have a box at work that has an old celeron 733 (P3 era), same ram as yours, 80 gig wdse, plextor 48cdrw, sblive platinum, and a ati 32mb radeon using xppro. It's hard to imagine, but people come in and use it and they all guess it's at least a p4 1.8
Keep it as a spare, don't spend more on it.
 
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