Just got a free computer - ideas of what to do with it?

[exodus454]

I was thinking of turning it into a server of some kind, possibly a file server. But there has to be something more interesting I can do with it, something to help out the rest of the computers on the network, something. I'd prefer not to turn it into a linux box or a pron server, so please don't suggest it.

Any ideas?

Its an old IBM workstation, P3, 128 memory, 30gb HDD. Currently running windows 98, but I'm thinking about 2000.

 

[imported_rod]

Hmmmm.

Media Centre? Is it fast enough to handle on-the-fly video encoding?

Home Automation centre - you could interface it with an X10 kit.

RoD

 

[Dritnul]

u know that sceen from office space where they steal the computer and bash it up

u could re-enact that!

 

[Budman]

doorstop

 

[Running]

add some hd's and make it a NAS

 

[secretanchitman]

old gaming machine! great for diablo 2 and starcraft! haha....

besides file server, i dunno what else...

 

[pkme2]

Verrrry interesting. Too bad.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

donate to a church for word processing and printing?

 

[Skeeedunt]

Run an unpatched linux server and violate your ISP ToS while getting hax0red by n00bz0rz?

 

[Koharski]

I'd say Dos box, but thats more of a job for a 486 or a P70

run folding at home, its fun to tweak and it for a good cause.

 

[vegetation]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
donate to a church for word processing and printing?

They wont take it. Most places only want a P4 and above system with Xp on it. Not worth their time to troubleshoot something that old.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: Koharski
run folding at home, its fun to tweak and it for a good cause.

I'd go with this. I've got 3 old P3 systems crunching away. Most of them have their extra drive space shared as file serve space as well, which works out well.

 

[ForumMaster]

run SETI or Prime95 on it to help science? just make it a server of some kind. or possibly into an audio server?

 

[Sforsyth]

Add abit more ram and give it to someone that doesn't have one.

 

[thescreensavers]

is int there some way to network them and then all thosue computers can be compined to one wiht your main comp and then you got all thouse computers working to gether to do some task.

 

[Oyeve]

Give it away. Post some flyers around. Im sure someone can use it. I give all my old PCs away.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Give it away. Post some flyers around. Im sure someone can use it. I give all my old PCs away.

Me think better Idea get all 3 computers and raffle them off. or put them in 4 boxses and for 100 Dala they chooise which one and one has somthing better then the others or somthing like that.

 

[Eug]

With another 256 MB RAM and Windows 2000, that machine would make for a fine surfing machine.

 

[Saivior]

Make it a media center computer. Hook it up to the TV record/play all those shows you always wanted to see.

My neighbor has an old P3 like that, he trashed Windows, put linux on it and he uses it to record/watch Family Guy. He's got it networked to his other comp. and controls it from there.

 

[aniruddha23]

Install apache.

search for available mispelled domain names. (googlr.com)

host mispelled domain names.

Add google ads to each.

make free money every month.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: aniruddha23
Install apache.

search for available mispelled domain names. (googlr.com)

host mispelled domain names.

Add google ads to each.

make free money every month.

why dont you do that and googlr.com goes to google

 

[aka1nas]

If you throw a decent amount of RAM in it, you could make a DVR out of it, provided you bought a TV-Tuner with hardware encoding capability (i.e. Hauppauge PVR150) and used software that supprts it.

 

[l3thal]

Speaking of NAS we just updated our NAS at work. 3 new NAS clusters, 20 TBs of drives split between each cluster, each split in a RAID 5. I'm not sure the exact usuable space but it's drool.