knate5000 Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 I recently got an old Compaq 5000 (P4 1.6Ghz)for free. I already have an old Dell I bought a few years ago and a 1 year old gaming pc that I custom built. There are no parts in the Compaq that I could use, but surely there must be a use for it. So what do you do with old computers? I was thinking about install Linux on it to mess around with. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmanmcp Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 So what do you do with old computers? Do you have a door in the house that just won't stay open? Do you have a boat that keeps floating away? Does your desk sit near a breeze and the papers keep blowing away? Is there an empty spot in the basement that needs filling? I usually strip out the parts and save for a couple years for replacements. After awhile I toss them when I am sure they are not needed anymore (I fix friends and neighbors computers). The P4 is way past the time I would keeps its parts. I would just toss it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 So what do you do with old computers? I'm still using mine..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeren Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 One of my old desktops will be getting linux (Ubuntu). My other one I will uninstall programs off of and make a dedicated Trade Wars server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevesh Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 If it works and you don't need it, check out freecycle.org - someone in your area will want it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxturt Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 Freecycle is good, yes. Senior Citizen and Veterans groups will often take working machines as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wampthing Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 Ive done a couple of things with mine. 1) Ive installed freenas on one and use it as a home server to store local files to share with all of my other computers. This one is a way old computer. Were talking back in the days with 384 meg of ram was a decent amount (I rarely use more than half of it). There are a lot of fun things that you can do with it (bittorrents, Itunes/Daap, etc). worse case scenario its fun to tinker with. 2) Another thing that I have done is to attach a large hard drive to an older computer and run Mozy and Logmein on it. I then stuck it in a closet and run it essentially headless (using logmein.com). Then I have all of my other computers back up to it. This accomplishes two things for me, 1) I have a local back up of everything and 2) I can have one $5 license of mozy to have an off site back up all the information that has been aggregated from the rest of my computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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