What to do with old computer?

[MrMatt]

I have a 600Mhz gateway from back in the day. It even has a 16MB voodoo card! Seriously though, what do I do with this thing? I have no use for it, who would take it, after I thoroughly wipe the HD?

 

[Kaervak]

Trebuchet is always a fun option. Or you could take it to your local Goodwill/thrift store.

 

[RavenSEAL]

roflcopters

 

[Leros]

^This

he should hotlink it?

 

[thescreensavers]

^

 

[RavenSEAL]

he should hotlink it?

lol

 

[bhanson]

Trebuchet is always a fun option. Or you could take it to your local Goodwill/thrift store.

(NSFW)

So I googled trébuchet to confirm accent placement and ended up clicking on the first non-wikipedia link (the first link showing the accented word).

Vagina, guy licking an armpit, black guy on a cross. Unexpected mixture of content to say the least.

 

[OUCaptain]

I tossed a second nic into an old 800mhz box and made a firewall/router that doesn't choke with lots of torrent sources. I used IPCop btw. I like it so far

 

[RavenSEAL]

(NSFW)

So I googled trébuchet to confirm accent placement and ended up clicking on the first non-wikipedia link (the first link showing the accented word).

Vagina, guy licking an armpit, black guy on a cross. Unexpected mixture of content to say the least.

Someone needs to turn the Safe Filter back on D:

 

[iGas]

Turn it into a neck Bling Bling.

 

[Leros]

Turn it into a neck Bling Bling.

In high school, I knew a guy who wore a harddrive platter around a gold chain. He also had a gold painted calculator he wore around a gold chain.

I had some nerdy friends in high school.

 

[nageov3t]

seems like most second hand places don't want your old POS computer that would overheat just surfing facebook.

I'd chuck it in the trash/recycling.

 

[iGas]

I tossed a second nic into an old 800mhz box and made a firewall/router that doesn't choke with lots of torrent sources. I used IPCop btw. I like it so far

LFS has worked well for me in the past including 486s & 32 megs or ram with floppies (but they weren't that fast), anything 100mhz & over with a hdd or cdrom is more than adequate for a firewall.

 

[Ichinisan]

Use it for legacy games that require Glide acceleration.

 

[iGas]

in high school, i knew a guy who wore a harddrive platter around a gold chain. He also had a gold painted calculator he wore around a gold chain.

I had some nerdy friends in high school.

lol

 

[Printer Bandit]

(NSFW)

So I googled trébuchet to confirm accent placement and ended up clicking on the first non-wikipedia link (the first link showing the accented word).

Vagina, guy licking an armpit, black guy on a cross. Unexpected mixture of content to say the least.

at first i though that was kanye west on the cross.

 

[Eli]

seems like most second hand places don't want your old POS computer that would overheat just surfing facebook.

I'd chuck it in the trash/recycling.

Please, please don't just throw it in the trash. There are way too many nasty chemicals in it.

Find a reputable computer recycling place(ie: one that doesn't just ship everything to China). They will be happy to take it off your hands.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I have a Pentium III 800MHz with 256MB of PC100 RAM sitting in my closet with at 500GB hard drive in it. No keyboard or mouse. No monitor. I installed Xubuntu, setup a LAMP stack and installed Torrentflux and Webmin. Now I can offload all my torrenting to that machine, and access the torrentflux interface remotely. I also store backups or other files on it as necessary.

I'm sure it's probably not very economical to leave that thing running all the time when there are other, simpler hardware solutions, but I had the machine and it was a fun project that taught me a lot about Linux.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I have a Pentium III 800MHz with 256MB of PC100 RAM sitting in my closet with at 500GB hard drive in it. No keyboard or mouse. No monitor. I installed Xubuntu, setup a LAMP stack and installed Torrentflux and Webmin. Now I can offload all my torrenting to that machine, and access the torrentflux interface remotely. I also store backups or other files on it as necessary.

I'm sure it's probably not very economical to leave that thing running all the time when there are other, simpler hardware solutions, but I had the machine and it was a fun project that taught me a lot about Linux.

Jesus...a 500GB HDD on a P3? Epic bottlenecking right there.

 

[bhanson]

I have a Pentium III 800MHz with 256MB of PC100 RAM sitting in my closet with at 500GB hard drive in it. No keyboard or mouse. No monitor. I installed Xubuntu, setup a LAMP stack and installed Torrentflux and Webmin. Now I can offload all my torrenting to that machine, and access the torrentflux interface remotely. I also store backups or other files on it as necessary.

I'm sure it's probably not very economical to leave that thing running all the time when there are other, simpler hardware solutions, but I had the machine and it was a fun project that taught me a lot about Linux.

I have a Barton 2500+ with 1GB sitting in my closet that I could do something similar with and get use out of it, but I wouldn't get enough benefit to justify the extra electricity and heat. I guess I should craigslist it.

 

[Kadarin]

Please, please don't just throw it in the trash. There are way too many nasty chemicals in it.

Find a reputable computer recycling place(ie: one that doesn't just ship everything to China). They will be happy to take it off your hands.

Don't all recyclers these days just ship them to China? Come to think of it, I'm pretty much ok with that, as that way they have to deal with the pollution and contamination there rather than us here in the US.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Jesus...a 500GB HDD on a P3? Epic bottlenecking right there.

I don't exactly ask it to do much. Yeah, file transfers could be a bit faster, but eh, whatcha gonna do? It's web pages load slow -- especially when it's running a bunch of concurrent torrents -- but they do load. I'm getting ready to upgrade my main box, so it will bump down and supplant my Ubuntu Studio rig, which will itself then probably take the place of the P3 machine and I'll get rid of it. There's a place in Seattle that takes old machines and will even give you a charitable donation receipt.

 

[BoomerD]

I have a few that I need to haul off to recycling.

Sony Pentium 200 (with MMX!) that has an All-in-Wonder 2 mb video card...AND an 8 mb Voodoo II add-on card. Really rocked Quake II with that!

Then, I have an old Gateway Pentium II machine that I upgraded to PIII 700 mh...which was as far as it could go...
And my wife's old Dell P-4 celeron 2.4 non-upgradable machine...None are worth anything to anyone...so recycling is the best choice.

 

[DrPizza]

Put a bunch of freeware games on it. Load up the best browser that it'll support. Sell it for $10 on craigslist.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I have a Barton 2500+ with 1GB sitting in my closet that I could do something similar with and get use out of it, but I wouldn't get enough benefit to justify the extra electricity and heat. I guess I should craigslist it.

When I get rid of that P3 and replace it with the S939 3500+ I'll probably also see if I can make it a MythTV backend to which I can offload transcoding jobs and/or store recordings. Hell, it might even hold a tuner or two.

I'm sorta curious what kind of electricity it consumes in actual dollars, but I'm also kinda afraid to know. I'm sure it's more than I really want to spend on it, but I like to tinker with these kinds of things, so it's simply the cost of my hobby.