what to do with a pentium pro 200mhz

[kornphlake]

I got 2 pentium pro 200 mhz processors and motherboars they were used on. I also have a couple of workstation graphics cards from the same era, and 64mb edo ram for each, so the question is what can I do with them? I don't think I'll want to go through the effort of configuring them just to run distributed computing, that's not really my thing. Was there anything really special about the pentium pro's, apparently they support multiple processors, up to 4 processors but I doubt I could find a board to put them on at this point. Should I just place these quickly in the garbage can or will they serve me well in some way?

 

[Vette73]

Router/Firewall? eBay?

 

[MisterChief]

I own at least 3 dozen "Dark Ages" CPUs - Z80/4044/8088/286/386/486/pentium/pentium w/MMX/pentium pro/AMD K5, etc.

Unless you collect them, there's nothin old procesoors like that can do nowadays

 

[zakee00]

trash

 

[wampa]

keychain

 

[BW86]

protein shake

 

[kornphlake]

it's been a very long time, but will Doom II run well on a 200 mhz machine? IIRC I played it on a 486 with something like a 2 meg graphics card. I never did finish the game though, the graphics card wasn't fast enough. Would it be worth setting it up just to run doom II?

 

[CheesePoofs]

Why not just run doom II one your normal rig? It'd be as smooth as possible, and you wouldn't have to go through the trouble of trying to get that chip working.

 

[FrustratedUser]

The P-Pro was an awesome chip. Way faster than higher clocked early PII.
It'll still be a good Word processing, e-mail, surfing machine. I did 3D CAD on them so they're not total crap.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Backpack-sized mp3 player.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

actually, P-Pros do not have MMX, so depending on your sound card, playing MP3s can be a chore.

OC the bad boy. I got some up to 266MHz.

 

[miketheidiot]

distibuted computing.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: zakee00
trash

 

[imported_Kiwi]

There are STILL a huge number of non-profit organizations using PC's with internals even more obsolete than the MB's/ cpu's you have acquired. They generally get their office hardware through donations, and fairly often in larger metropolitan areas there are volunteer organizations where old donated PC hardware is cleaned up, repaired, etc. for distribution to area charities and other similar community resources.

Perhaps such a volunteer group would like to use your parts to upgrade some P-I/66 PC's . .

 

[IdahoB]

knock up a decent firewall with IPcop.

 

[Jman13]

Originally posted by: wampa
keychain

I second that. I've had a 486DX2/66 as my keychain for about 6 years now. The headsink has some of the little squares bent in from being in my pocket for so long, but other than that it's still in good shape! It's pretty cool looking. I tore each of the pins off with needlenose pliers when I converted it, and I attached a ring by molding 'weld stick' around the processor and two electrical connector rings that I fused together. Epoxy wouldn't hold the ring to the chip, but the weld stick has been keeping it solidly attached since day 1.

I still get asked about it from time to time. I'm sure one of these days, when it wears too thin, I'll have to 'upgrade' my keychain to an Athlon or something.

 

[kornphlake]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
The P-Pro was an awesome chip. Way faster than higher clocked early PII.
It'll still be a good Word processing, e-mail, surfing machine. I did 3D CAD on them so they're not total crap.

These were used originally by the company I work for as CAD machines. Based on the type of machines we have now I know that these processors/video cards were top of the line when they were purchased.

I was thinking doom II because I never could get it to run right with windows 98, DOS only seemed to be the best bet for whatever reason. Maybe I'll look into donating them to some charity though it's probabally not worth my time, the PS2 gets most of my gaming time as it is.

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
distibuted computing.

that was what i was going to say

 

[gobucks]

I'd put a file sharing program like exeem or shareaza on there and just let it download crap all day long, without tying up your main rig.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Fold!

 

[piroroadkill]

Originally posted by: kornphlake
it's been a very long time, but will Doom II run well on a 200 mhz machine? IIRC I played it on a 486 with something like a 2 meg graphics card. I never did finish the game though, the graphics card wasn't fast enough. Would it be worth setting it up just to run doom II?

Doom II will fly on almost anything.

I don't hear your BS about the graphics card being too slow, I played and completed Doom II on an AMD AM-386SX 40 (yes, no co-processor) with a 1MB Trident ISA graphics card, and 4MB of RAM.

It flew through everything, the only time it was slow was on the last level when you had the infinitely spawning sprites in such a small space, just a few whacks of the - key and it has less to render, and you're away again.

You could play Quake on it if you ran a co-processor emulating layer, but that would be slow as hell. Never bothered with it.

You could even overclock it. It posted once at 50mhz, but then sh it itself. Back to 40mhz and all is shiny again.

 

[Shagger]

Swallow it and see if it will pass??? :shocked: