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What to do with old PCs?

A

AllWhacked

Senior member
I've been tasked to clear out my company's stock area to make room for more crap and to get us ready before we have to move and throw this stuff out anyway. I had to do a walk through to see what we had so the ewaste company can assess whether I have enough junk to qualify for free pickup.

Anyway, after looking at all our junk we got quite a collection of old PCs, some work and some don't. I really don't have time to test all them and aside from turning some of the older Pentiums or PIIs into linux firewalls/routers, I'm not to sure what else to use these machines for.

I have been thinking of resurrecting an old Pentium and stuffing it with as much dimm memory it could hold and making a kickass DOS Game box. But other than that and the linux firewall (which I might forego considering the electrical costs/benefits versus a small $50 wireless router), I have no idea what to do with these things. Is there any use or value to them?

The few items I plan to keep are 1 or 2 ega monitors for just in case. Along with maybe 1 or 2 286/XT machines. I actually made use of one of them because a customer had an original CPQ deskpro with an 10MB MFT drive and needed to get his junk off it but the computer finally died on him. I also plan to keep at least 1 Pentium or PII to make into a DOS box machine (though I think a PII may be too fast for some of them). And I plan to keep a couple of those early Macs to turn into aquariums or to sell. And my crowning jewel is a IBM PC Jr in the original box and it's portable carrying case. It looks like it has hardly been used and it still works. See my on antique road show in 40 years. Just in time for retirement.

Anyway, I've visited a few sites that gave suggestions but they pretty much all say the same thing:

1) Install Linux
2) Build a firewall/router
3) Host a home web/FTP server

If you can give me some ideas, I would like to save some of the machines rather than have them "recycled." Also if there is a free alternative like say there is a free FTP hosting company that can do what a home FTP server can do but better, I would like to hear that as well.

Thanks for anyone who can give me some advise.
 
This sounds like a perfect job for an OpenMOSIX cluster to run F@H on. No really, that, and get the fastest 486 setup as a DOS box to play old school games on.
 
i keep mines in working conditions for a live museum in my place 😀
ranging from XT to the latest in the market
but specially proud of the Dual P-233mmx, Dual PIII-1 Ghz, Dual Core AMD FX60, Core2Duo X6800

the XT, 286, 386 and 486 are just too old for anything good, except DOS games, and Win3.11 😀
so they are mostly just idling there, every now and then i turn them back on to recharge the BIOS battery, when i play games on them

Even if i install Linux into the 386 and 486 both of them wouldn't be too fast anyways 🙂
 

once i donated a bunch of hardware to the Alameda
County Computer Recycling Center. they sent me
back a long list itemizing everything in the box.
which was very useful at tax time. i think the
same would go for a corporation ... if your company
donated $1000 to a school, you could deduct that
as charitable giving or something ... i think.

anyway, their URL is
http://www.accrc.org/

i like the sound old computers make. i think they
have potential as musical instruments. a big enough
collection of hard drives could hit most of the notes
an octave above and maybe 2 octaves below middle
C. a 5 1/4" Seagate double height 47 GB UW SCSI
being sort of a bass intrument.

an old Western Digital 3 1/2" half-height
in the 40 MB range made a real outstanding scratchy
sound, like when people run records backwards.
 
There is a company that is called Techturn that will give you fair market value for the machines you give them. They turn around and sell them to other people after they've wiped them and run them through some tests.
 
Old, working DOS machines are great for machine controllers and other low grade functions. The biggest problem is the reliablity of the old parts.
 
Hmm, the thinclient idea sounds very interesting. I remember physically installing 5 or 6 thin clients at a vetinary hospital. I didn't give it much thought afterwards, but that's something to play with.

Thanks for the link dwcal.
 
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