Repurposing an Ancient PC - Ideas?
When I bought my kick ass, Dell XPS Super-Computer, I reformatted my old HP 8660c Pavillion and gave it to my daughter.
She limped along with that piece of crap until she got her own laptop.
So now, I have a redundant, mostly obsolete computer that I'm thinking must still be good for something.
You can peruse the base specifications of the 8660c here. I think I upgraded the RAM and the video card.
There must be something I can use it for.
Rudimentary home automation? DIY robotics? Simple porn storage?
C'mon, all you techno geeks! Use your imagination. Gotta be sumpthin'.
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9 comments:
Well, if you have a home router, and kids at home, you could put linux on it, and use Squid Proxy Server to control access to the internets. (Two NIC's required.)
Likewise, just turn it into a file server on your nework. (linux works fine if you make sure Samba is running.)
your own webserver? dvr?
low maintenance, high feel good factor: go here, download the software and beat Scully and Mulder to the punch.
I've got 3 ancient beige toasters in the place and I tasked 2 of them full time when I went broadband years back.
One Word, UBUNTU
I like Doc's idea. You could let it churn through SETI packets and in it's spare time, it could be a backup server for your main system. Mirror a couple of external HDs and let it back up your stuff automagically.
Just came across this yesterday
Explains how to set up a webserver on old equipment
Music server, file back up, DVR (used an old gateway for that), and yup LInux (Ubuntu works very well for this)will serve that quite well.
I use my current anchor as a file and music server. Occasionally I will dump a video to it when I am hacking raw video up.
honey pot server. Put it outside your firewall and help catch the bad guys.
Link goodness.
If you're not the techo-tinker-putter type you could always consider donating the box to tornado / flood / fire victims.
There's a lot of need out there and tax deductions available.
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