Picked up a Dimension 4100 for $5... decisions

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cyclone3d

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So I picked up an old Dell Dimension 4100 for $5 from a thrift store today...

PIII-866, 256MB RAM, Geforce-256, PCI SB soundcard, etc.

It works fine and is only missing the hard drive.

The main reason I got it is because I really like the style of case. My Retro rig has almost the same exact case. They are pretty easy to rewire and can fit a regular ATX board.

I am contemplating putting my old TYAN S1854, PIII-933, ATI 9700 PRO, 768MB PC-133, etc. in it for a second retro gaming rig. Would probably have Win98SE on it.

Is it even worth it to swap out the motherboards at this point or should I just leave the stock on in there?
 
Either board would be fine for your needs, but make sure that you buy a new PSU.
 
a machine like that would make a great NAT box if you could stick a second network card in it. gives a little boost to networking speeds and those speeds become more solid while under load. (torrenting, etc) just install fedora to it and play with the gui firewall utility to get the connection forwarded as well as any port forwarding you might need done. internet goes in one end and the other goes into a regular switchport on the router. while you are at it, grab a copy of the hosts file at the mvps site for the box and your lan is more or less ad-free without any work needed done on the clients' side.

only issue you may run into is with dhcp. you'll need to disable it at the router and configure dnsmasq to run dhcp as well as the dns server.
 
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SinShiva said:
a machine like that would make a great NAT box if you could stick a second network card in it. gives a little boost to networking speeds and those speeds become more solid while under load. (torrenting, etc) just install fedora to it and play with the gui firewall utility to get the connection forwarded as well as any port forwarding you might need done. internet goes in one end and the other goes into a regular switchport on the router. while you are at it, grab a copy of the hosts file at the mvps site for the box and your lan is more or less ad-free without any work needed done on the client sides.

only issue you may run into is with dhcp. you'll need to disable it at the router and configure dnsmasq to run dhcp as well as the dns server.
Click to expand...

Bah... now you have me wanting to use one of my other old systems I have laying around for a NAT box.... how about a P4 1.6Ghz system? Or I could use another PIII setup.. have enough parts to make another one.
 
i'm using a 700mhz p3 with 512mb of ram for mine :]
 
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