Resurrections

[chris]

I got bored today and I fixed up a few of the PCs that are sitting around my house doing nothing in particular. They both have minor problems but nothing that can't be worked around.

The first:

AMD Duron 750mhz, 576mb RAM, currently no HD, 64mb nVidia graphics card(PCI) Broken AGP slot

The second:

Intel P3 800mhz, 192mb RAM, 8gb HD, integrated graphics.

Now I just need something to DO with the damn things. Any suggestions?

 

[The Macster]

Try Vista or Server 2008 on one or both of them? It would be interesting to see how it performs on machines close to its minimum official specification - you'll need at least 512 MB Ram to be able to install Vista or 2008 (so the AMD is in, and the Intel too if they use the same type of memory and you can swap it over), and the processor requirement is 800 MHz but I doubt that MS are as bad as Apple and put blocks in to thwart installation below that, so the AMD should hopefully still be good to go. If you have a reasonable graphics card (DX9, plus I think it needs 128 MB+ of memory) you'll even be able to get the full Aero interface.

 

[mac-man6]

Load it with some BSD Unix and make it your own NAS machine (network attached storage. You could run them headless, I'm trying to do that with a spare machine I have kicking around.

http://www.freenas.org/

 

[The Macster]

Windows Home Server might be worth a go if you want a storage-type device, it's based on Server 2003 so is quite lightweight for an older machine, although it feels a bit like a poorly-finished modification of Server 2003 as opposed to a proper home server OS in its own right (eg the installation is long and involves a lot of reboots, it seemng to just install a regular Server 2003 and then install a whole load of extra packages that turn it into WHS, it has all the normal server admin tools installed but tells you not to use them as you can screw up the WHS management console's functionality that way, there's a mixture of WHS and Server 2003 branding in it eg the boot screen is the Server 2003 one) and there is this weird file corruption bug in it that hasn't been fixed yet, so I would be tempted just to go with a standard (2003 or 2008) server OS instead if I was making an older PC into a server.

 

[chris]

Macster:

Pity to see the language Nazis are here too. Ah well, I won't start fights. Edited for language.

No Windows for me.

I have a copy installed on one of my newer machines(3.0ghz P4) and it doesn't even run well on that. And if I wanted to make a NAS, I would never use Windows.. Linux is the way to go for any server, or BSD, or OSX. Unix basically. I try to avoid Windows entirely besides my gaming PC and the aforementioned test box.

 

[coius]

Macster:
**** Vista. No no no no no no no.

I have a copy installed on one of my newer machines(3.0ghz P4) and it doesn't even run well on that. And if I wanted to make a NAS, **** Windows entirely. Linux is the way to go for any server, or BSD, or OSX. Unix basically. I try to avoid Windows entirely besides my gaming PC and the aforementioned test box.

hey hey! language. Let's keep it clean on the forums!!!

 

[Christopher]

hehe, I like OS X for file server use, works great with my iMac 350MHz. It would be great if I could add another hard drive to the machine.

You should just linux on one of the machines for a file server, sell the other one if you can.

 

[benjgvps]

Give them to me! Well you could use them as an internet browser hooked up to your TV with a wireless keyboard.