What to do with an old PC?

Wisey! · 01-03-2009, 01:12 PM

In rooting through my attic I found an large old Win95 PC, complete with monitor and keyboard (can't see a mouse anywhere though, probably have a spear one too). The keyboard is huge as well, with Macro buttons and the function buttons twice =S

I've been randomly browseing the web looking for ideas whit what to do with it, I've read about people turning old laptops into digital picture frames, running stripped-down OS's to re-gain some speed out of there machine or turning them into media servers etc.

Aside from destroying, selling or recyleing it, does anyone have any good/mad ideas with what to do with it? Has anyone done anything intresting with their old PC's?

=D

**ssj4Gogeta** · 01-03-2009, 02:07 PM

If you do huge downloads, you could use it as a downloading rig. A CRT picture frame (LOL) would look strange. What are the specs? it may be able to run a lightweight distro of linux.

**justpassingby** · 01-03-2009, 08:38 PM

I refurbished 2 old Pentiums running win 98 for a nursery school, they often lack the money to buy recent rigs and 3 year old kids don't mind playing with casper the friendly ghost instead of spongebob. Finding the games can be hard though (in this case one of the teachers still had win95 and win98 educational PC games on working floppies)

**WereBo** · 01-03-2009, 08:49 PM

What I usually do with any old PC's is - after deleting any personal files etc., clean off all the software, install basic online protection (AVG Free, SpywareBlaster, A2 free etc. + all the updates), defrag the machine then give them to local charity shops, with a spec-list of exactly what the PC is.

Wisey! · 01-04-2009, 05:49 AM

ssj4Gogeta,
Haha, yeah, a CRT would make a fairly strange picture frame. I havn't plugged it in to have a look yet, but I think it's a P1 something like 300-400Mhz, no idea about RAM, it may even have two harddrives (3-5GB), either that or it had two partitions... I can't remeber, I'll have to plug it in and boot it up... Do you think it will run a light distro of linux of that version Win98 thats been cut down quickly? I've read that you can get some OS's that are so slim that they can boot in 10 seconds on old machines. Do you recon that'll be possible with mine?
Questions, questions...

justpassingby,
Awww, thats well special. Good man! I don't know any nurserys arround here though... Plus I'd rather like to use it for something myself, it's called being selfish. =P

WereBo,
Agian, props to you for giving it away, but I'd kinda like to keep it.

Cheers so far guys!

**WereBo** · 01-04-2009, 06:03 AM

If you have more than 1 PC in the home that share an internet connection and/or printer, you could always set it up as a print/internet server

**ssj4Gogeta** · 01-04-2009, 06:26 AM

It all depends on how much memory you have. There are many lightweight distros of Linux available, like vector Linux, xubuntu, slackware, etc. they have slightly different minimum system requirements, so please check the amount of memory you have on that system. wmorri might be able to help you more.

EDIT:forgot damn small Linux and puppy Linux.

Wisey! · 01-04-2009, 06:31 AM

WereBo,
I already have a Wireless router with ADSL modem that shares my internet connection between 2 laptops, another old desktop (occasionally) and a PS3. But a print server could definitely be useful, although I doubt the old girl would be very energy efficient or quiet... The printer we have is one of those fairly cheap HP all-in-one jobbys, is there a way of sharing scanners over the network too? Cheers!

ssj4Gogeta,
I shall check soon! Thanks

**WereBo** · 01-04-2009, 06:57 AM

In theory, it's possible to share a scanner over a network - in reality you'll need 'networkable' drivers for your all-in-one unit and some prayers - oh, and some spare fingers to cross, if possible. It's one of those instances where it either works perfectly 1st time, or you'll spend hours fiddling and playing with it.

My setup consists of 2 PC's, 1 with XP Home (Mrs WereBo's) and t'other with XP Pro (mine) and Mrs WereBo also has a laptop running Vista Home Premium. We have a HP 5650 'Network' printer, hooked into the XP Home PC.

All the machines can see the printer, but my XP Pro machine refuses to install the drivers for it - I keep getting fatal errors, and the Vista laptop (with Microsoft's drivers) only 1/2-prints any document (literally - the page stops 1/2 way down the page and hangs there, I have to press the 'Off' button to finish the print

) I've finally managed to get all the splinters out of my fingertips from scratching my head so much.

We also have a HP 5400 scanner, but none of the other machines can see it anywhere, I suspect because there's no 'network' drivers available for it.

I think that, to get the whole lot working properly, we need a new 'network-capable' printer and scanner, but that'll have to wait until these ones finally die - which could take a long time with HP peripherals

**wmorri** · 01-04-2009, 06:25 PM

Hi,

I would like to know the specs of the old doorstop to figure out what some options would be. I don't need to know the mobo manufacture or anything like that but just the basics, primarily ram, hdd, what type of connections it has. Can it handle a NIC, etc. This will go a long way to figuring out what to do with it.

Cheers!

Wisey! · 01-05-2009, 04:50 AM

WereBo,
Well, tbh the only time we've used the scanner is for photocopies which dosn't even require it to be hooked up to a PC, so just the printing side of things networked would be rather useful.

I seem to have bad luck with printers, my first epson failed from the print head dieing or something like that. My second epson died for a few months then came back to life agian for no reason (thats now at uni, still serveing me well) and the HP all-in-one jobby has been repaid once after having it a month or two...

Although I refuse to buy anything other than the cheap £5-10 ink cartridges for them, which may have something to do with it...

wmorri,
Just been into the loft and powerd her up, I have to say, I don't know why we even bother with XP and Vista, booted up in 20-30 seconds (Windows 98 SE) and shut down in 3. Sadly shes not quite as good as I thought she was.
200Mhz Pentium CPU
32Mb RAM
4.75GB HDD
No built in networking, but I have spare NIC I can use, and I'm pretty sure it works because I remeber using it to host scripts for an MTA server to work.

The one problem with it that I remeber now, is that I could never get the USB ports to work, as I could never get drivers for them =/ Which is the sole reason I got it off a friend, I wanted something to run Win98 so I could run some stuff that I had that only works on 98.

**ssj4Gogeta** · 01-05-2009, 04:59 AM

I still think you should go with Linux, because windows 98 is old. Installing a modern lightweight Linux will most probably give you more apps and options to work with and it may get those USB ports working as well.

**wmorri** · 01-05-2009, 05:18 AM

Hi,

I think that you have a couple of options that you can look at. I fee that linux would be a great option. Going further on that note, you have a couple of distros that you might want to check out. One is call Damn Small Linux. The other is Puppy Linux. Take a look that these too, the only thing that I am concerned with is the 32mb of ram. I know that DSL Will run it but I am not sure about puppy.

Cheers!

**ssj4Gogeta** · 01-05-2009, 05:24 AM

And you might also want to save an image of your win 98 HDD somewhere that will give you an option to go back if you can't get Linux working. (though I doubt that will be the case.)

Wisey! · 01-07-2009, 07:01 AM

Sorry about the late reply chaps.

I've been thinking if I could get hold of some drivers for the USB ports on that PC I'd free up a higher spec PC to have a play with Linux on. The specs are as follows:

Gateway Desktop
-Windows XP & 98 SE Dual Boot
-500Mhz Pentium 3
-128MB RAM
-3dfx Voodoo 3 GFX
-10GB & 60GB HDD

98 on the 10GB (Master) and XP on the 60GB (Slave).

I'll have snoop around and see what I can find. Maybe post in the Win98 forum.

Lets, for the moment, say I wanted to install Damn Small Linux (some Googleing revealed bad things about Puppy Linux and small amounts of RAM, although it does look quite good) on the PC I originaly mentioned. I looked on the offical website but got a little confused when it came to what exactly to download, it gave me access to aload of folders through ftp and I wasn't really sure what I was looking for.

Thanks for the info so far guys!
V. helppful =]

**ssj4Gogeta** · 01-07-2009, 07:11 AM

It says in the read me (http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/damnsmalllinux/current/ ):

Quote:

There are currently four types of DSL....

dsl-<version>.iso: the standard isolinux version, which is used for liveCD,
frugal, or traditional harddrive install.

dsl-<version>-syslinux.iso: boots using syslinux instead of isolinux,
used for some very old hardware that is no longer supported by isolinux.
Use syslinux version if booting fails with the standard iso.

dsl-<version>-embedded.zip: comes with qemu, for running inside of a host
Windows or Linux system.

dsl-<version>-vmx.zip: a virtual machine that will run in VMware or
VMware player.

**justpassingby** · 01-07-2009, 07:14 AM

With Win98 the drivers come with the devices. If you want to use an USB flash drive and it's not recognized right away you'll need to find the win98 driver for that flash drive. With XP the USB drivers are integrated in SP2.

Wisey! · 01-07-2009, 07:22 AM

Right, thanks guys! I think it's time to bring the old girl down from the loft and have a play.

I've just downloaded the embedded version to have a play with.

I'll post agian once I've done both, maybe tomorow.

Cheers agian!

01-03-2009, 01:12 PM	#1 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	What to do with an old PC? In rooting through my attic I found an large old Win95 PC, complete with monitor and keyboard (can't see a mouse anywhere though, probably have a spear one too). The keyboard is huge as well, with Macro buttons and the function buttons twice =S I've been randomly browseing the web looking for ideas whit what to do with it, I've read about people turning old laptops into digital picture frames, running stripped-down OS's to re-gain some speed out of there machine or turning them into media servers etc. Aside from destroying, selling or recyleing it, does anyone have any good/mad ideas with what to do with it? Has anyone done anything intresting with their old PC's? =D

01-03-2009, 02:07 PM	#2 (permalink)
ssj4Gogeta Custom User Title Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: India Posts: 1,864 OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, Leopard (Kalyway) My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? If you do huge downloads, you could use it as a downloading rig. A CRT picture frame (LOL) would look strange. What are the specs? it may be able to run a lightweight distro of linux.

01-03-2009, 08:38 PM	#3 (permalink)
justpassingby Moderator, Microsoft Support Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 6,219 OS: XP Home SP3 / Ubuntu My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? I refurbished 2 old Pentiums running win 98 for a nursery school, they often lack the money to buy recent rigs and 3 year old kids don't mind playing with casper the friendly ghost instead of spongebob. Finding the games can be hard though (in this case one of the teachers still had win95 and win98 educational PC games on working floppies) __________________ Malware removal steps. Post your logs there and not here ! Posting system specs Last edited by justpassingby; 01-03-2009 at 08:40 PM.

01-03-2009, 08:49 PM	#4 (permalink)
WereBo Resident Village Idiot Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: SE London, UK Posts: 14,420 OS: Win-7, XP-Pro SP3 My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? What I usually do with any old PC's is - after deleting any personal files etc., clean off all the software, install basic online protection (AVG Free, SpywareBlaster, A2 free etc. + all the updates), defrag the machine then give them to local charity shops, with a spec-list of exactly what the PC is. __________________ I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.

01-04-2009, 05:49 AM	#5 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? ssj4Gogeta, Haha, yeah, a CRT would make a fairly strange picture frame. I havn't plugged it in to have a look yet, but I think it's a P1 something like 300-400Mhz, no idea about RAM, it may even have two harddrives (3-5GB), either that or it had two partitions... I can't remeber, I'll have to plug it in and boot it up... Do you think it will run a light distro of linux of that version Win98 thats been cut down quickly? I've read that you can get some OS's that are so slim that they can boot in 10 seconds on old machines. Do you recon that'll be possible with mine? Questions, questions... justpassingby, Awww, thats well special. Good man! I don't know any nurserys arround here though... Plus I'd rather like to use it for something myself, it's called being selfish. =P WereBo, Agian, props to you for giving it away, but I'd kinda like to keep it. Cheers so far guys!

01-04-2009, 06:03 AM	#6 (permalink)
WereBo Resident Village Idiot Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: SE London, UK Posts: 14,420 OS: Win-7, XP-Pro SP3 My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? If you have more than 1 PC in the home that share an internet connection and/or printer, you could always set it up as a print/internet server __________________ I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.

01-04-2009, 06:26 AM	#7 (permalink)
ssj4Gogeta Custom User Title Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: India Posts: 1,864 OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, Leopard (Kalyway) My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? It all depends on how much memory you have. There are many lightweight distros of Linux available, like vector Linux, xubuntu, slackware, etc. they have slightly different minimum system requirements, so please check the amount of memory you have on that system. wmorri might be able to help you more. EDIT:forgot damn small Linux and puppy Linux. Last edited by ssj4Gogeta; 01-04-2009 at 06:30 AM.

01-04-2009, 06:31 AM	#8 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? WereBo, I already have a Wireless router with ADSL modem that shares my internet connection between 2 laptops, another old desktop (occasionally) and a PS3. But a print server could definitely be useful, although I doubt the old girl would be very energy efficient or quiet... The printer we have is one of those fairly cheap HP all-in-one jobbys, is there a way of sharing scanners over the network too? Cheers! ssj4Gogeta, I shall check soon! Thanks

01-04-2009, 06:57 AM	#9 (permalink)
WereBo Resident Village Idiot Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: SE London, UK Posts: 14,420 OS: Win-7, XP-Pro SP3 My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? In theory, it's possible to share a scanner over a network - in reality you'll need 'networkable' drivers for your all-in-one unit and some prayers - oh, and some spare fingers to cross, if possible. It's one of those instances where it either works perfectly 1st time, or you'll spend hours fiddling and playing with it. My setup consists of 2 PC's, 1 with XP Home (Mrs WereBo's) and t'other with XP Pro (mine) and Mrs WereBo also has a laptop running Vista Home Premium. We have a HP 5650 'Network' printer, hooked into the XP Home PC. All the machines can see the printer, but my XP Pro machine refuses to install the drivers for it - I keep getting fatal errors, and the Vista laptop (with Microsoft's drivers) only 1/2-prints any document (literally - the page stops 1/2 way down the page and hangs there, I have to press the 'Off' button to finish the print ) I've finally managed to get all the splinters out of my fingertips from scratching my head so much. We also have a HP 5400 scanner, but none of the other machines can see it anywhere, I suspect because there's no 'network' drivers available for it. I think that, to get the whole lot working properly, we need a new 'network-capable' printer and scanner, but that'll have to wait until these ones finally die - which could take a long time with HP peripherals __________________ I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.

01-04-2009, 06:25 PM	#10 (permalink)
wmorri Moderator/Fedora Amb. Join Date: May 2008 Location: /pm/etc Posts: 2,814 OS: Window 7/Fedora 10 My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? Hi, I would like to know the specs of the old doorstop to figure out what some options would be. I don't need to know the mobo manufacture or anything like that but just the basics, primarily ram, hdd, what type of connections it has. Can it handle a NIC, etc. This will go a long way to figuring out what to do with it. Cheers! __________________ Linux Forever!

01-05-2009, 04:50 AM	#11 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? WereBo, Well, tbh the only time we've used the scanner is for photocopies which dosn't even require it to be hooked up to a PC, so just the printing side of things networked would be rather useful. I seem to have bad luck with printers, my first epson failed from the print head dieing or something like that. My second epson died for a few months then came back to life agian for no reason (thats now at uni, still serveing me well) and the HP all-in-one jobby has been repaid once after having it a month or two... Although I refuse to buy anything other than the cheap £5-10 ink cartridges for them, which may have something to do with it... wmorri, Just been into the loft and powerd her up, I have to say, I don't know why we even bother with XP and Vista, booted up in 20-30 seconds (Windows 98 SE) and shut down in 3. Sadly shes not quite as good as I thought she was. 200Mhz Pentium CPU 32Mb RAM 4.75GB HDD No built in networking, but I have spare NIC I can use, and I'm pretty sure it works because I remeber using it to host scripts for an MTA server to work. The one problem with it that I remeber now, is that I could never get the USB ports to work, as I could never get drivers for them =/ Which is the sole reason I got it off a friend, I wanted something to run Win98 so I could run some stuff that I had that only works on 98.

01-05-2009, 04:59 AM	#12 (permalink)
ssj4Gogeta Custom User Title Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: India Posts: 1,864 OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, Leopard (Kalyway) My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? I still think you should go with Linux, because windows 98 is old. Installing a modern lightweight Linux will most probably give you more apps and options to work with and it may get those USB ports working as well.

01-05-2009, 05:18 AM	#13 (permalink)
wmorri Moderator/Fedora Amb. Join Date: May 2008 Location: /pm/etc Posts: 2,814 OS: Window 7/Fedora 10 My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? Hi, I think that you have a couple of options that you can look at. I fee that linux would be a great option. Going further on that note, you have a couple of distros that you might want to check out. One is call Damn Small Linux. The other is Puppy Linux. Take a look that these too, the only thing that I am concerned with is the 32mb of ram. I know that DSL Will run it but I am not sure about puppy. Cheers! __________________ Linux Forever!

01-05-2009, 05:24 AM	#14 (permalink)
ssj4Gogeta Custom User Title Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: India Posts: 1,864 OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, Leopard (Kalyway) My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? And you might also want to save an image of your win 98 HDD somewhere that will give you an option to go back if you can't get Linux working. (though I doubt that will be the case.)

01-07-2009, 07:01 AM	#15 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? Sorry about the late reply chaps. I've been thinking if I could get hold of some drivers for the USB ports on that PC I'd free up a higher spec PC to have a play with Linux on. The specs are as follows: Gateway Desktop -Windows XP & 98 SE Dual Boot -500Mhz Pentium 3 -128MB RAM -3dfx Voodoo 3 GFX -10GB & 60GB HDD 98 on the 10GB (Master) and XP on the 60GB (Slave). I'll have snoop around and see what I can find. Maybe post in the Win98 forum. Lets, for the moment, say I wanted to install Damn Small Linux (some Googleing revealed bad things about Puppy Linux and small amounts of RAM, although it does look quite good) on the PC I originaly mentioned. I looked on the offical website but got a little confused when it came to what exactly to download, it gave me access to aload of folders through ftp and I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. Thanks for the info so far guys! V. helppful =]

01-07-2009, 07:14 AM	#17 (permalink)
justpassingby Moderator, Microsoft Support Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 6,219 OS: XP Home SP3 / Ubuntu My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? With Win98 the drivers come with the devices. If you want to use an USB flash drive and it's not recognized right away you'll need to find the win98 driver for that flash drive. With XP the USB drivers are integrated in SP2. __________________ Malware removal steps. Post your logs there and not here ! Posting system specs

01-07-2009, 07:22 AM	#18 (permalink)
Wisey! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: England Posts: 86 OS: Windows Vista Home Edition My System	Re: What to do with an old PC? Right, thanks guys! I think it's time to bring the old girl down from the loft and have a play. I've just downloaded the embedded version to have a play with. I'll post agian once I've done both, maybe tomorow. Cheers agian!