Gowator Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 OK guys and a few girls.... Inventive uses for the following generic SPECS Rules are spend little or no money, have fun the wackier the better!!! OH and it must run a linux kernel :-) (I thought that was obvious) :D P100 -64MB, 2GB disk, crappy graphics (1-2MB or less) P500 - 256MB -10GB disk, reasonable graphics (16MB card) Firewalls? routers? proxy servers? NFS /Samba/whatever.... :?: Edits: I thought this might spark some ideas for when people are 'stuck' with an old machine they can't bare to throw out :-) The specs are just examples so feel free to change like the webserver, could add another 40Gb for <50$ for instance. NIC's are ten a penny, my idea (and I actually have an old P90 that will overclock to 100) in my cupboard is to set it up as a router for DSL running NAT so I can use all my machines. This is a use linux to breath the last breaths from your old hardware thing.... :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 for the second one I say do a freevo box. of course, you'd need a video capture/tv tuner card... i'm going to build myself a freevo box soon here (hrm, i think), with my AMD T-Bird 750mhz mobo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveleh Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 OH and it must run a linux kernel :-) (I thought that was obvious) That comments ruled out my suggestion then which was to put another OS to good use and use them as door stops. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 2, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 OK, I like the sound of that but I'm currently using them to fill shelf space act as paperweights and all manner of inventive uses.... I just thought there might be another use??? :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 P100 -64MB, 2GB disk, crappy graphics (1-2MB or less) For this one, I would suggest turning it into a firewall/router. Get yourself a couple of network cards and install something like Smoothwall GPL, or one of the other dedicated firewall/router programs. P500 - 256MB -10GB disk, reasonable graphics (16MB card) The freevo idea is good, but the specs on the machine are a little thin for that. 10GB is not a lot of space. You could use it as a web server running apache/php/mysql. However, I think the best idea is to use it to run your coffee maker.... http://tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Coffee.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted June 2, 2003 Report Share Posted June 2, 2003 We used a P200 as a gateway, firewall, central fire store and printer server. Worked really well. You could also use it for dedicated game server, take some of the strain off your own machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezroller Posted June 3, 2003 Report Share Posted June 3, 2003 firewall router would be the perfect way to breath life into that thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted June 3, 2003 Report Share Posted June 3, 2003 I have a P1 200MHz 120MB (yes 120, not 128) running as a headless file download and internet server. The dma on the second channel switches off after half a day or so, and I reboot less than once a month (well, reboot, my girlfriend sometimes pulls the plug by accident or so)... If not I would use it as a backup server as well, but with a sustained datarate of 1.8MB/s this is no fun... I do stream my .avi's directly from it, it's fast enough for that. You could also attach a webcam and use it as a security system. I recently found out you can switch off the light on the webcam, sort of 'silent mode'. Of course then you really do need to upload each image to the net, because they might steal the machine and then what good would it be... ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 3, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 3, 2003 aRtee gave me another idea, how about an X25 home control thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted June 4, 2003 Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 Old machines are perfect for making X terminals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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