• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

What can I do with this old PC?

M

Modder

Gawd
Joined
May 1, 2012
Messages
757
I have an old Sony Vaio desktop sitting in a cabinet collecting dust out in my mod shop that I pulled out of a dumpster at work. I think it's an old P4 with something like 256 or 512 mb of ram, either an 80GB or 160GB ide hard drive and i dont know if it has dedicated graphics (probably not). It does work and will eventually load windows XP after about 10 minutes or so.

I've had it on craigslist for like 4 months and nobody has picked it up so I was wondering if it's worth repurposing or if I should hang onto it long enough to take it to an E waste recycling event where I can dispose of it.
My total budget for this thing is $0.
Things I've thought of:

1) An Untangle router, though I was told I don't want that kind of headache. My cable modem / built in wifi router is in 1 room and I wouldn't be able to have the Untangle router physically in that room. I'd have to run a cable to some other part of the house.

2) HTPC file server - though I'm not sure I want to go this route given that the hardware is so old and I haven't opened it to see if it even has SATA ports. Even if it does, I can pretty much bet it's SATA 150 at best.

3) Not really sure what else. I'm sure it has some sort of purpose, though I don't know what that might be.

Any ideas would be helpful. This thing didn't cost me a dime, so I'm not scared to throw it away.
 
rather than throw it away, you could always donate it. may be an old POS to any of us, but i'm sure it would be a boon to someone else
 
^ Donate it. Put on Ubuntu/Kubuntu and list it as an internet browsing machine. Say it's worth is that of $100 and use it to deduct your taxes.
 
i'm seriously considering turning my old athlon x2 4200+ into a m0n0wall box, either that or using it for (paintball) target practice
 
I use my oldest computer for my personnel stuff that I don't want to expose to the internet.
As paranoid as I am about the internet it is completely isolated from it.
I have stripped it down to just the OS and my data.
Works very well for me.
 
Put in the garage if you work on your cars. Great place for car related PDF's and you don't have to worry about getting the mouse and keyboard yucky.
 
Pentium 4 is better than what I have in my file server. How many SATA ports does it have, or is it pure PATA?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top