What to do with Pentium II 233mhz MMX?

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Winterpool

Senior member
Mar 1, 2008
830
0
0
Assimilator1, I for one would be very curious as to how many watts your old rig is pulling. I take it that means your overclocked Celeron 366 (a classic 'Mendocino' chip, right?). I've got a Pentium II, two Pentium II-based Celerons, and two Pentium IIIs, and I do wonder if any of them are worth running any more, considering their power draw. Now that I've a couple of VT-capable systems, it seems like it would be more efficient (in every sense of the word) to simply spend a few $ on more memory to enable another virtual machine or two.

Even though PIIs and IIIs used very little power, the system as a whole still has to run (the drives, fans, etc), and of course older systems tended to come with extremely inefficient power supplies (< 65 per cent at typical load).
 

Marty502

Senior member
Aug 25, 2007
497
0
0
Heh, this thread couldn't come at a better time. I've been just given an old PII 300 Mhz with 64 Mb of RAM, and a freakin' Diamond Monster Fusion video card! That thing was the shit back then! It has a Voodoo Banshee chip.

Mom wants it for old games, e-mails and stuff... but I wanna make good use of Glide on it too. :D Diablo 2, UT, what else should I put into it?
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
donate it for a tax write off

it's not worth the power it uses

i like that one...
How do I go about it? the place where I work just scapped 30 old PCs (like, p2 old). I managed to save 3 from the trash compactor... told them off too, said it needs to go to the hazardous waste center. Anyways, I got them sitting here, I was going to bring them to the hazardous waste center myself, but if I can donate them for a tax write off, well, all the better!
 

Drsignguy

Platinum Member
Mar 24, 2002
2,264
0
76
Originally posted by: taltamir
Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
donate it for a tax write off

it's not worth the power it uses

i like that one...
How do I go about it? the place where I work just scapped 30 old PCs (like, p2 old). I managed to save 3 from the trash compactor... told them off too, said it needs to go to the hazardous waste center. Anyways, I got them sitting here, I was going to bring them to the hazardous waste center myself, but if I can donate them for a tax write off, well, all the better!


Oooooo, now this is interesting, I will have to look into this? :)

 

Davegod

Platinum Member
Nov 26, 2001
2,874
0
76
I'm not convinced it's even worth donating, I cant see anybody making good use out of it.

As a general rule do not donate anything that does not have a resale value. Even if you're not donating somewhere that will sell it, if there's no resale value that's because nobody wants it. it costs money to sort out and dump your rubbish.
 

imported_Kiwi

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2004
1,375
0
0
Originally posted by: Assimilator1
I've got a power meter if anyone want's to know the power useage of my old rig listed below.

Originally posted by: A Hitman
Use it for classic games!
What you need is a 3dfx card

That's what my Cel 366 @550 is used for :) ,Voodoo1 & Riva 128 :p ,wish I'd kept the GF3 I had for the AGP card!

There's a running PC on the floor here (win98se) with a GF3 Ti 200 in it. I'd have used the Ti-500, but that one was masquerading as an FX 5200 (that's how I had it marked, and it is a dead ringer for that trash). I'd thought I'd use a P-I/MMX 233 for a Windows95 retro game system, however, getting either a game port joystick or any kind of USB anything working was just more trouble than it was worth, after all.

I still have a GF2 GTS, I think.



 

Soulkeeper

Diamond Member
Nov 23, 2001
6,732
155
106
Basically you'd take it to a place that would give you a "tax deductible receipt"
I found THIS LINK
not sure how they'd calculate it, sounds like you'd be able to writeoff the current market value


edit: lol "you may also deduct this software donation. " so throw in your old win95 cd's too
too bad that site wants you to register and pay a fee just to see how much you can writeoff for, i'm sure any tax preparer would know tho.
 

oval53

Junior Member
Jun 5, 2008
6
0
0
You guys bring up great memories. I still have my cely 266a and my original diamond 3dfx w/ a whopping 4 megs of ram (Oh yeah it also cost $300 in "96). I wish I still had my trio 64+ and my NEC tile based 3d card . A three card system way back when.

Josh
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
I remember my first upgrade... I took my 1MB of ram PC, and had an 8MB stick of ram added to it for a whopping total of 9MB of ram...
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,152
517
126
Kiwi
With the driver disc I've got my 256MB & 1GB flash drives to work with my Celeron, Oh & I still own midi port joysticks ,not that I've used them in years :p.

Marty502
Screamer Rally & Unreal, can't remember any others :eek:.

Originally posted by: Winterpool
Assimilator1, I for one would be very curious as to how many watts your old rig is pulling. I take it that means your overclocked Celeron 366 (a classic 'Mendocino' chip, right?). I've got a Pentium II, two Pentium II-based Celerons, and two Pentium IIIs, and I do wonder if any of them are worth running any more, considering their power draw. Now that I've a couple of VT-capable systems, it seems like it would be more efficient (in every sense of the word) to simply spend a few $ on more memory to enable another virtual machine or two.

Even though PIIs and IIIs used very little power, the system as a whole still has to run (the drives, fans, etc), and of course older systems tended to come with extremely inefficient power supplies (< 65 per cent at typical load).

True but I run it so rarely that power useage isn't really an issue, plus it also means I can have a 3rd person playing LAN games here.......as long as we stick to UT, WC2 or Starcraft;).

I'll try to remember to power test my Cel 366 @550 this week, PM me if I forget! :eek:.
And yes its a Mendocino (spelling??) chip ,the 1st Intel chip with on die cache :) (as opposed to just on chip aka Pentium Pro).
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,152
517
126
Have it running strapped to the front of a banger car & see how long it can run P95 for ;).
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
Originally posted by: Foxery
Keychain!

Ok, so that doesn't work so well for components with sharp pins... There are actually recycling facilities who will take old computer parts and dispose of them "safely." Motherboards in particular contain some chemicals that aren't supposed to be taken to the dump.

Or you can just toss it in with the rest of your trash.
 

james1701

Golden Member
Sep 14, 2007
1,791
34
91
I was cleaning out my moms attick the other day and ran across my old Laser Turbo XT 8088. That thing was the bomb. Two 5.25 disk drives and later I added a 3.5 to it. You could add a meg of dram chips for extened memory and use it for a mem drive. It was way better than using the old tape drives on my Co Co 2. If I can find my Dos disks, I might see if it will boot up this weekend.
 

pzkfwg

Junior Member
Feb 2, 2005
19
0
0
In case you need it, you can easily find DOS disks for free on the Internet. It seems they are not copyrighted anymore...
 

richwenzel

Member
Sep 19, 2007
172
0
0
look at puppy linux and damn small linux and see if you can get anything to run on it, just for kicks.
 

graysky

Senior member
Mar 8, 2007
796
1
81
Make it your PVR. Run Knoppmyth (mythtv distro of linux). Although you probably won't use it for capturing live tv, you can use it to play your avi/mpg movies as long as you have video board with s-video out.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,330
1,841
126
That CPU should OC to 263mhz easy (just bump the FSB to 75), might even handle more.

It wouldn't make a very good box for surfing the web or any modern uses, but it would make for a decent box for retro gaming or experimenting with *nix
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,330
1,841
126
Originally posted by: graysky
Make it your PVR. Run Knoppmyth (mythtv distro of linux). Although you probably won't use it for capturing live tv, you can use it to play your avi/mpg movies as long as you have video board with s-video out.

233 mhz isn't really enough to decode divx, xvid, mpeg4, etc. Full screen DVD playback will be choppy at best. That said, mythmusic would work just fine as long as you don't care about the visualizations.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
Originally posted by: graysky
Make it your PVR. Run Knoppmyth (mythtv distro of linux). Although you probably won't use it for capturing live tv, you can use it to play your avi/mpg movies as long as you have video board with s-video out.

233 mhz isn't really enough to decode divx, xvid, mpeg4, etc. Full screen DVD playback will be choppy at best. That said, mythmusic would work just fine as long as you don't care about the visualizations.

exactly.. it is too slow to surf modern websites.
It is too slow to play back video of any kind.
It is much slower then any router you can buy, and will perform poorly, and will be big and power hungry in comparison...

Is it even fast enough to decode modern music formats?

It is a paperweight.