An old pc is a terrible thing to waste...

[pshannon]

Well I have once again been given an old pc from someone who doesn't know the joy of fixing old stuff...poor fools.
It doesn't have a network card however, and I really don't feel like spending more than 0$ on this machine.I thought I might use it as a place to store confidential files and perhaps a station for programming. ( I would install Debian 3.1 on it )Does anyone else have a box that isn't connected to the internet?What do you use it for?I really hate to waste a perfectly good box.

[©opy®ight]

Well i have one thats not connected to the net but still connected to my other PC. I use it to sore music, setups, movies etc. (in case my other one crashes)

[Katja]

Originally posted here by ©opy®ight
Well i have one thats not connected to the net but still connected to my other PC. I use it to sore music, setups, movies etc. (in case my other one crashes)

. o O (Why would anyone want to sore music? :P)

I used to have an old Compaq laptop with an Intel 80486 processor in it. It used to be running Windows 95 but I replaced it with SuSe Linux. With a harddisk of 2 GB and 96 MB ram, it wasn't very useful either. The battery was dead too so it wasn't even very portable. But it did what it needed to do.
I gave it away to a friend of mine who wanted to learn more about Linux too. He didn't have any computer and I had three. I never really used this laptop anyway so he's having a lot of fun with it.

[Aspman]

I've got an old P1 box that I might set up with smoothwall. Might do for a bit of storage also.

Sore music. If I look back some of my older CD's some of it is really sore.

[unhappy]

I use an old PII laptop to let virii go crazy ... but I od connect it to net now and then.

[Lv4]

heh, I have a couple of old machines that aren't hooked up to the internet. I have an old DEC VP laptop (the "thin" one) that I don't use for much other than to prop my door open to my balcony.

My other one is a dev box that I use to compile all of my "fun" tools and I just sneakernet everything to and from it.

[!mitationRust]

If you're smart you'll set up an ebay account and go through pay pal.......What I do is order 50 free boxes from USPS( because I use them)..... People need vintage components all the time. I had to buy an Early 90's APPLE MACINTOSH POWERBOOK 5300CS for a friend and replace the screen on his old one. Thank God someone had one up for sell because his important one of a kind custom coded 2d calcium isotope application would only run on that OSX bullcrap version OS...whatever.

If you order the boxes don't abuse the system or the FED's will want reparations plus interest. Somehow they can see if those boxes made it through their system. You don't want uncle Sam on your ass like white on rice, especially when his hand is out.

http://shop.usps.com/cgi-bin/vsbv/po...lat+Rate+Boxes



1867 MAC: http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3039/131323dm.jpg

[hesperus]

Here's a great mod for an older laptop (that will run at least Windows 2000) :

How to Turn Your Old Laptop Into a Digital Video Recorder

Many new multimedia notebooks include built-in television tuner cards and software that let them double as digital video recorders. But you don't have to buy a whole new laptop just to record your favorite shows.

The Instant TV for Notebooks card from ADS Technologies (adstech.com) can retrofit a not-cutting-edge laptop and let it record the latest episode of "Lost" to your hard drive.

The card snaps into the laptop's CardBus slot and has a coaxial jack for connecting an antenna or TV cable. An A.V. jack and cable for capturing analog video are included, as are a tiny remote control, software for recording and managing video files, and a guide that displays channel listings on screen. The Instant TV for Notebooks card, which is available from online retailers for about $90, works with Windows 2000 and XP, although Windows XP is needed to use the video manager software. TV shows recorded to the laptop's hard drive can be burned to a CD or DVD to regain hard drive space - or to watch on a roomier screen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/te...s/15tuner.html

[Tedob1]

keep your eyes open on garbage days. someone's always throwing away a computer with little or nothing wrong with it. get yourself a free nic or two this way...plus a surplus of other parts.

[gore]

Originally posted here by Tedob1
keep your eyes open on garbage days. someone's always throwing away a computer with little or nothing wrong with it. get yourself a free nic or two this way...plus a surplus of other parts.

I always just call the cable company for the neignboors and then when they go inside pop the vans open. Lots of NICs in there.