Gaming What to do with an old 443mhz computer?

[Foxle]

I was moving out of my dorm yesterday, and someone was throwing away an old 443mhz E-Machine Celeron processor computer. It's an old beige tower with a read only CD drive, a hard drive of unknown size, and some USB ports, ethernet, etc. Oh, and Wifi. The guy who was throwing it away let me have it, though I'm not exactly sure why I took it yet... Right now it's sitting in my storage unit, and I won't have access to it until this fall.

He's got Linux on it, despite it coming with Windows 98. I'm thinking it might make a good server or NAS. I may just end up throwing it away myself (well, properly recycling it, etc). Sorry I don't have any better specs to list, I haven't booted it up yet. Do you guys have any ideas of what I should do with the machine? Thanks for the advice!

Oh, I also already have a website ( http://www.flatfootfox.com/ ), so I don't need to make it into a server.

 

[notnarb]

take it from someone with two 400 PIIs lying around (one being used by and pissing off my dad and the other taking up around 1/3 of the walking area in my room atm) along with a 1.8 celeron collecting dust: throw it away! I would suggest putting it next to your TV as a media center PC, but it's just too underpowered to do much

Edit: it would be usable as a computer for someone who doesn't have one, so perhaps consider putting windows 2k (yes, a linux distro would be more useful, but there's a good chance it will alienate people) on it, loading Abiword and Openoffice and give it to goodwill or something (protip: if they can view craigslist, they don't need it

). I know of families who don't have a computer and need one for school and something like this would fit the bill

Edit 2: If it's sturdy enough you could use it as a 1 man sled

Or just throw it at someone

 

[Regiiko]

Have fun with it by blowing it up or something.

 

[toguro_max]

I'd say you to use it as a server, but you already dispached this option...
You could always test virus on it >-p
And if you know programmimg, you could test your apps on it, for compatibility sake

 

[GexX2]

Play old dos games on the bitch.

 

[themuddaload]

Play old dos games on the bitch.

^that assumes you can find some floppies that havent corrupted yet ='(

you could put it in your closet, and then every time you see it, you could point and laugh at it for only being a little more powerful than a psp.

yeah, i still have my p3 celeron 633mhz sitting around -- have to get rid of it at some point.

 

[budrow66]

Put it in the trunk of your car. Buy a power inverter put it in the trunk also. Put a wifi card in it and a TV out vid card. 2 PS/2 extension cords and a 25 foot coax. Mount one of thoose tiny TVs that run off 12v under your dash. Hook it all up and put winamp on it. Then you can just pull up in your driveway download music or whatever and listen to it with crazy visuals as you ride. Or just use it to send a quick email or text to someone while sitting in the parking lot of somewhere with a wifi hotspot.
I know it sounds silly, but I did this with an old computer once and it was kinda fun.

 

[Mangofett]

Put retro emulators on it and hook it up to your TV.

 

[steve-p]

e-machines suffer from a crap psu that will take out the usb & eventually terminate the entire mobo.

if you want to keep it - test it..
if the usb works change the psu, if not then strip it for parts or re-use the case or something coz the psu & mobo will be totalled.

 

[Justin121994]

Take out the harddrive and use it for the wii if u have one lol.

 

[Beware]

You could send it to me.

I have a few uses for it (server, music, fun).

 

[Pimpmynintendo]

1. Give it to somebody you hate for their birthday
2. Office Space it

 

[da_head]

STARCRAFT!!!!!!!

seriously. that game runs on almost anything xD

 

[themuddaload]

i bet starcraft would probably run slow on a 400mhz, unless it has some kind of gpu, which i doubt it does.

diablo 2 on the other hand... ran perfectly on my 633 mhz compy

 

[BiscuitBee]

You could turn it into a high-quality router!

pfsense
http://www.pfsense.com/

m0n0wall
http://m0n0.ch/wall/

It will be more stable than a Linksys (or other Home Use routers) and have plenty more options to play with... like unlimited port-forwarding, bandwidth logging, VPN, months of uptime, etc etc

 

[Foxle]

You could turn it into a high-quality router!

pfsense
http://www.pfsense.com/

m0n0wall
http://m0n0.ch/wall/

It will be more stable than a Linksys (or other Home Use routers) and have plenty more options to play with... like unlimited port-forwarding, bandwidth logging, VPN, months of uptime, etc etc

Oooohhh... That's a good idea! Being able to VPN home from my campus would be nice. ^^

 

[BiscuitBee]

You could turn it into a high-quality router!

pfsense
http://www.pfsense.com/

m0n0wall
http://m0n0.ch/wall/

It will be more stable than a Linksys (or other Home Use routers) and have plenty more options to play with... like unlimited port-forwarding, bandwidth logging, VPN, months of uptime, etc etc

Oooohhh... That's a good idea! Being able to VPN home from my campus would be nice. ^^

m0n0wall has a lesser RAM requirement (I think it's 64 MBs) but it has fewer options.

EDIT: And pfsense only needs 100 MHz... so your CPU should be fine.

 

[triassic911]

Sell the parts.