Intel iMac from work...

[Cory5412]

I really think it can be valuable to only want to collect 68k Macs, and to be honest if it weren't for the fact that OP seems to like the web reasonably well, doing productive work on an old computer isn't inherently bad. (Although, there are always gotchas and if the "work" computer is new enough, but still old, there are obviously security risks in doing so.)

Although, it is worth noting that regardless of the computers, reasonable precaution and doing things like keeping backups of your working files and having access to spare parts (or money to buy them if you don't already have them on hand) is great, nay, necessary.

The other thing is that while 68k Macs are interesting, the web does change and web sites can change at any point in time, possibly becoming more difficult than they already are for an old Mac to view.

Also, I'm with mcdermd on the thoughts about 68k Mac protohipsterism that I see from a lot of the 68kMLA's youngest members. It is nice to see the enthusiasm, but somewhat hilarious to see how it plays out in people who feel nostaligia for a way of life that existed before they did.

I suppose it's like a computerized versions of one of those living history museums. But you probably didn't hitch up the wagon train to get to the history museum.

 

[techfury90]

Dysentery!
[attachment=0]oregon_trail.gif[/attachment]

I'm glad we both have the same pirated copy of Oregon Trail...

 

[redrouteone]

I think you're way too odd, OOM. It's like you're grasping for some geeky hipster title where you only use 68k Macs.

On my, we have hipsters now. How funny.

 

[onlyonemac]

It's nice to focus on 68k Macs for your hobbying, but it's always a good idea to have a modern system to use for accessing the web, etc. It's reasonable for this system to be a Mac, although that really is up to your preference. A surprising-but-good number of people on the forum have linux desktops, for example. (And, Intel-based Mac hardware can run Windows 7/8 and linux pretty well.)

We've got two PCs as well. One's a familly machine; the other's the old familly machine which has become mine recently.
My one's got Linux on it as well now |) .

 

[Cory5412]

At the risk of ruining something that looks good, does it have modern linux that gets security patches on it?

 

[onlyonemac]

Sorry, no.

 

[IIfx]

Why not? There really is no reason not to run a current linux distro, and keep up with patches. After all, Linux is cost free.

While security issues are not as great on Linux, its still extremely unwise not to keep up with patches...

 

[mcdermd]

xx( It hurts.

 

[onlyonemac]

My PC won't run a newer version.

And besides, what has this to do with an iMac?

 

[IIfx]

I have run (then-2009) current versions of Ubuntu on Pentium 3 rigs at 800mhz with 256mb RAM fine. Recently tried Mint on a machine with a 1.4ghz Pentium M and 512mb RAM and it also went well.

It doesnt have anything to do with the iMac, but it does have to do with poor computer security practices. But like I said, its less of a problem with Linux than Windows. Still, recent linux distros handle SO much better than the older temperamental ones. Vast strides in UI, audio layer, video drivers, etc have been made in the past 4 years.

 

[IPalindromeI]

My PC won't run a newer version.
And besides, what has this to do with an iMac?

Then you're smoking something funny, or your PC is nowhere near modern - I run Windows 8 and 64-bit Debian perfectly fine on a Pentium D - that's a CPU from 2006 and I'm using it today fine. (of course, I'll get a new one soon, but this is usable)

 

[Gorgonops]

Other than one very specific semi-exception based on a bug in the silicon, which I've actually run into with my old Dell D600, most CPUs going all the way back to the mid-late 1990s are technically capable of running a modern Linux distribution (assuming you have sufficient RAM and other resources, obviously). It's de rigueur these days to compile with flags that require 686/PAE or later, so yes, if your computer dates before the latest 1990's it *might* be a minor hassle to run something that still gets updates, but there are exceptions; some of the "lightweight" distributions like vanilla Debian and Slackware will still install on a 486. Only if you have an original, genuine, 80386DX/SX or a really oddball/ancient clone chip are you genuinely out of luck. (The latest versions of GCC dropped 386 code generation a while ago, and Linux 3.8 has expunged support for those first 32 bit chips from the kernel tree; apparently restricting to the 486 and later removes the need for a bunch of special-case cruft.)

So "my computer is too old" is a pretty lousy excuse. Is the real problem your "limited broadband" makes you afraid to spend your bandwidth quota on downloading an iso and applying security updates? (With some broadband quotas that almost qualifies as a "legitimate" worry in a "wow, there's no way to win" sort of way.)

 

[onlyonemac]

The real problem is this:

I am using an old PC from around 2002 with a 300-something MHz processor and 225 MB of RAM. It came with XP SP1 on it.

In addition, I'm trying to cram a Wubi installation onto an already-packed 38 GB hard drive.

That is the problem.

 

[IPalindromeI]

The real problem is this:
I am using an old PC from around 2002 with a 300-something MHz processor and 225 MB of RAM. It came with XP SP1 on it.

In addition, I'm trying to cram a Wubi installation onto an already-packed 38 GB hard drive.

That is the problem.

You have too many problems:

300 Mhz? In 2002? The Mhz race was on by then, you would have had a P3/P4 with 1 Ghz+. (The P4 would have had it for inflated numbers, but it'd be fastish.) That's P2 level Mhz.

Wubi? No, no, no. Get rid of that and install a MODERN (8.04 left LTS) Linux distro. Debian does fine on my machines with ~500 Mhz and 512 MB RAM. (Upgrade that RAM too. DDR isn't as common, but it is easy to find.)

If you expect to be able to use that machine though, you're on crack. Any browser you can reasonably use for the modern web will bring ANY P4 class to it's knees as soon as you touch any JS-using site.

tl;dr: holy heck get that iMac, it's better than the junker you have

 

[Gorgonops]

300 Mhz? In 2002? (snip) That's P2 level Mhz.

This. Could you even buy a 300Mhz CPU in 2002? That's not just PII level Mhz, that's *first generation* (late 1997 through 1998) 66mhz FSB PII. Even the lowly Celeron was over the 1Ghz mark by 2002. What precisely is the CPU in your box?

Debian

I second this as well. It's harder to install than Ubuntu but it still works "acceptably" on a 200mhz Pentium with 128MB of *slooow* RAM. (based on fairly recent experience. Note of course that's booting up and displaying basic pages in Firefox with "NoScript" installed. You ain't watching YouTubes on it.) Or, heck, if you insist Lubuntu will probably work better than an old version of Xubuntu running from Wubi.

Really though, back to the bigger issue: I have no idea what the used computer market is like in the UK, but I've tossed a number of computers more powerful than what you claim to have into electronic waste recycling over the last few years, and sold others (laptops) at garage sales for $10-$20 each. (Essentially charity there, it was totally not worth my time slapping Xubuntu on them but hopefully the buyers got some use out of the systems.) Do you need someone to give you a nickel?

 

[IPalindromeI]

That and they basically give away P4s by now - if you're lucky, you might get a Prescott, and while a bit slow, it's still capable and runs 64-bit OSes fine.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Replace the PC with the Mac. Its an Intel machine, meaning if you wanted, you could run Windows on it via Boot Camp or a VM. Depending on the graphics card, you might even be able to run Windows 8.

 

[Cory5412]

Not much left to say except that IPalindromeI and Gorgonops are completely correct. Debian will do well on a low-reosurce system, and if you were looking to increase your linux leetness anyway, just run it console only. You'll save desk space by getting rid of a mouse and using screen will let you tile your applications, or just run them one at a time in separate panes that you switch between. (Sort of like iOS or System 6.)

In addition, using a very simple text processing application like vi or nano/pico might be even better for your writing, and then later on you can connect to the machine using ftp, samba, or preferably sftp to pull the text file off and put it into a graphical application on any other computer you own.

Other nice things you can do with debian include installing telnetd or sshd so you can remotely access it from a Mac or another computer and then run the whole thing headless, if you want. (Although sometimes sitting down at the console of a console-only machine is exciting, and since you are the resident hipster of the site, it's certainly worth noting that this is an experience you might find valuable.)

You can do e-mail with alpine, twitter with perl and ttytter, you could go to m.facebook.com in links or lynx2 (or was it links2 and lynx? I can never remember, I'm sure somebody will fill in this detail with correct information, and I thank them in advance) and read RSS feeds with canto and use finch for instant messaging.

Console computing is actually really exciting and to be honest, is one of the biggest and most exciting reasons (for me) to use something other than a Macintosh with Mac OS X or a Windows PC with Windows 7/8.

As it was said above, in some places it basically rains better computers. I'll mirror what gorgonops said and mention that I have myself (and I routinely see people do even today) given away much more powerful computers than the one you've listed. I gave a friend a 2.8GHz P4 Northwood with at least a gig or two of ram and a new hard disk, as well as a monitor/keyboard/mouse, and another friend a Core2 E7400 system with a discrete graphics card and dual mirrored hard disks (on the Mac side of things, this would be a system that qualifies to run Mavericks by the way, I think 2009 is the equivalent model-year iMac to this system) along with a few laptops and of course some of my oldest ThinkPads routinely get brought to the local electronics recycling places if I can't find a use or justify having them around.

If you looked, you'd be able to find better hardware, and really, if even gorgonops is telling you that you need better hardware, then it's advice that you should probably not take lightly. Computing tasks change over time and unfortunately today that means sometimes operating systems, web browsers, and other everyday things get bigger as well. To put it simply, a computer like the one you describe (which really, I'll reiterate it again, sounds like a decked system from about 1996 or 1997, nearly twenty years old) just can't keep up.

This isn't cars where efficiency and performance progress peaked industrywide in the 1960s or 1970s and the only new things are safety features. This is computers where you can now outperform entire '90s datacenters in a single laptop.

The good news is that BeOS/Zeta/Haiku or even something like OpenSTEP might run on that 300MHz machine as a toy machine if you should pick up better hardware for your daily use.

 

[IPalindromeI]

When I drop down to a terminal, this is what I use:

• elinks: Most robust modern console browser. Some people like w3m better, and links2, while older does framebuffer graphics!
  
• vim: Emacs must die. (Actually, I'm cool with it, but it's bloaty and too complex, so I use mg for the emacs times)
  
• tmux: Windowing system that's nice - also does detachment! You have no excuses to run screen.
  
• cmus: Good easy to use music player.
  
• smuxi: spoilers, I contributed code to this, so I use this instead of irssi. A lot like Quassel.
  
• mutt: Alpine feels clunky.
  
• mcabber: A bit clunky, but adequate and does OTR!

So yeah, those are great. Also heard good about hnb, etc.

 

[Cory5412]

You can detach from Screen by using ctrl+A,then-d, or just closing your ssh session and using screen -raAd (or whatever particular set of switches you prefer) on your next system.

I have heard a lot of people like tmux a lot though.

Console is definitely like graphical in that there are a lot of choices available.

One other thing that the OP may consider to maximise the performance of a 300MHz system is to compile gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml