Old HP Compaq

[IcSilk]

yeah yeah. I've learnt alot and developed alot of new ideas through this thread. It'll be awhile until I can get a new HDD worth getting. In that time I'll be able to get up to par on hardware knowledge and Unix. I'll probably be able to use a more complex *nix distro by the time it comes to install something on this machine.

Im thinking I might try to get a tower and use the old lappie as the access terminal (AT) to it. I live in a college town so I may be able to come across something useable that was discarded as junk. I'd learn alot by fixing (or attempting to fix) something like that up.
Now if I went that route, I wouldn't actually need a HDD for the lappie, right?? Just remove the old HDD from the HP and use an access cable to join HP to tower.

Im on it, thanks again to everyone who responded.

EDIT: I was just on craigslist browsing in the computer section and I got thinking/conceptualizing. Really, if I had a complete tower unit I wouldn't need anything inside the HP lappie at all. then I was thinking about what kind of drivers would need to be installed in order to use the HP as an AT.
Im really excited about this, I have alot of freetime and have been looking for a project - not just any time killling project but a productive one.