What to do with PIII 450mhz?

M

maxse

Gawd
Joined
Apr 21, 2004
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My dad uses an old computer. it has about 384 megs of ram, 10 gig WD hard drive.

Its a pIII 450mhz, on an Asus P3BF mobo. Any ideas on what I can do with this setup?
 
File server.
Everytime someone brings this topic up, i always ask them if they want to give some of their RAM away... they never say yes.
 
replace p3-450 with slocket + 1ghz-ish celeron, and you could do any number of respectable things with it :).

If you want to leave it the way it is:

-use it to learn linux
-use as a webserver
-use as a fileserver
-use as a game-server
-use as a print server
-word processing box (I always have one of my lower end systems running as a word processor in my room, so I can write things like dreams down, or just do creative writing away from my computer room).

Erik
 
I'd use it for learning Linux...I've got a P2B-F w/ 450 pIII as well and that's what I'm planning to do !
twajetmech
 
the hard drive is only 10 gigs so that wouldnt work. Any chance I can oc to 1ghz or is that too much? Dont member if the processor is locked or not. And the mobo I think is pretty good, now?
 
Originally posted by maxse
the hard drive is only 10 gigs so that wouldnt work. Any chance I can oc to 1ghz or is that too much? Dont member if the processor is locked or not. And the mobo I think is pretty good, now?
Click to expand...

highly unlikely...
 
2nd gaming rig (thats what i used to play rtcw with), add ram, and a desent vid card and you should be able to play call of duty and metal of honor, ect on it (I threw in a geforce 3 and handed it off to some one at a lan, it worked ok better than nothing)

get a biger hd and use it as a file server, fold, give away, clean up and sell to some one with nothin, (i got damn near $500 for a system just a little better than than, but transportation and moniter and set up was included, so it just worked out to a free vacation)


but most of all, mod the hell out of it!!! "Compaq Presario AMD K6-300 with onboard video and sound (but at least I modded it)"-xavierq (we got that thing looking bad ass, saddly the system is just well, bad)
 
Originally posted by Dem
replace p3-450 with slocket + 1ghz-ish celeron, and you could do any number of respectable things with it :).

Erik
Click to expand...
I never was into Intel back in the P2/P3 days. My buddy has a P3 850. I came accross a Celeron 1.1 for him. I figured it's got to be faster with that much of a clock increase. We benched is PC with 3DMark and a couple of game time demos, stuck the Celeron 1.1 in and ran same benches, and I couldn't believe how much less it performed than the P3 850.
 
I use my PIII 450 as a fileserver and HTPC. I just put everything in a large case and stuck 7 hard drives in there.
I've got a Dual PII 450 that I play with Linux with.
 
guys can you please elaborate a little more on what yo mean by file server. Im not to familiar for its uses in the home, and how to actually set one up. The thing is that it runs WIN98SE and it wont let you have HD bigger than 80 gigs I think.
 
File server....as in a computer that serves "files". Nothing more to really elaborate. You store files on it as a backup. That's why my vote went to a File and Ghost Server.
 
I've spent most my working weeks lauching PIII 800Mhz-1ghz 's in a skip, apparently there too slow...... :(
Even worse, we're not allowed to give them a home..... so apparently that's what you do with a PIII 450... :eek:
 
Originally posted by acra2
I've spent most my working weeks lauching PIII 800Mhz-1ghz 's in a skip, apparently there too slow...... :(
Even worse, we're not allowed to give them a home..... so apparently that's what you do with a PIII 450... :eek:
Click to expand...
That's a shame to see stuff like that get thrown away without letting employees have a chance at taking them home. Suppose maybe there might have been sensitive data on them or something?

At the place I work, we like to keep stuff like that around in storage until it's so old that no one wants it at all. For instance, I threw away a bunch of old AT (80286 8mhz?) clone machines a few years back. Been stored away for probably 10 years or so....
 
Originally posted by maxse
guys can you please elaborate a little more on what yo mean by file server. Im not to familiar for its uses in the home, and how to actually set one up. The thing is that it runs WIN98SE and it wont let you have HD bigger than 80 gigs I think.
Click to expand...

I've got a bunch of hardrives in the case and share the drives. I guess this would be the lowest form of fileserving.
My server name is Screamer (name came from my days as a LightWave Animator, all the machines were named Screamer001, Screamer002, etc... for network rendering)
drive_list.jpg
 
You know.. I remember when that came out...

I bought a PIII 500 Slot HP computer and spendt 2400$ on it :( now its the biggest peice of garbage ever... lol
 
guys wouldnt it be cheaper to just add hard drives to ur new machine instead of having them in the old computer as storage?

Also will I be able to load XP or something on the PIII? I dont htink win98 will support drives larger than 80 gigs.
 
You can run xp on a p3 450, I have it running on a celeron 400 with 256 ram. It's slow but stable. Linux runs much better, I've played around with it as a file server and it works okay, just need to learn alot more about linux.
 
acra2 :

where are these computers?? im up for jumping in a dumpster hell even for the ram....
 
Originally posted by maxse
Any chance I can oc to 1ghz or is that too much? Dont member if the processor is locked or not. And the mobo I think is pretty good, now?
Click to expand...
A PIII-450 to 1GHz? Umm...no....as in, "not a chance in hell, even with liquid nitrogen and 100 volts, running just long enough to POST"

there are a lot of uses for that class of hardware. Use it for a game server (only dedicated, mind you, listen servers require more power), a file server, streaming media, gateway, donate it, sell it on the For Sale forum, etc...

and the PIII will run XP just fine, as long as it has 256MB of RAM.

You'll be *able* to run XP with 128, but will have to turn off all the eye candy to get it smooth, and you probably won't be able to do much else besides Windows:)
 
Originally posted by acra2
I've spent most my working weeks lauching PIII 800Mhz-1ghz 's in a skip, apparently there too slow...... :(
Even worse, we're not allowed to give them a home..... so apparently that's what you do with a PIII 450... :eek:
Click to expand...
you've got to be kidding me...Boeing wipes the drives of their old computers and donates them...

talk to your business, they might be able to get a tax break...I'm sure there are plenty of companies that would do all the work. It's such a waste to just throw them away...I can't believe they're doing it.
 
I am running XP Pro on all the machines.
XP runs great on a PII 300mhz with 512megs of ram and a fast scsi hard drive. That is what I was running when XP first came out. Before that I was running Win2K and that ran great as well.
The main thing is ram and a fast hard drive.
 
Originally posted by maxse
guys wouldnt it be cheaper to just add hard drives to ur new machine instead of having them in the old computer as storage?
.
Click to expand...

Well, I have too many drives. I've got 19 drives and they won't physically fit in one box.
 
Fold with it... Ahhhhh Haaaaaa.

I have a P2 450 that is the main rig, it stays on 24/7. The wife and kid use it to go on AOL, word processing, surf the web.
It's hooked up to a router, and has a 50 gig seagate scsi hard drive. Used to be the fastest computer on the planet 5 years ago.
When people talk about using an old computer as a file server, they mean to link it into your network with a hub or router. Mine is hooked up, but I don't use it for a file server. I transfer pics from my game machine to it, but that's about it.

Fold with a P2, I tried it. Took 3 days to fold 1 unit, barely made the time limit, so that doesn't work.

If you have kids in the family and they need an AOL machine, let them have it. Otherwise, what happens is you use the machine less and less as you get a new one. For me, I'm upgrading soon, the old machine will move over to an empty spot in the room. I'll still fire it up as I need things, but eventaully, it will be retired, an old relic like my old 486 sitting there now.
 
Originally posted by maxse
the hard drive is only 10 gigs so that wouldnt work. Any chance I can oc to 1ghz or is that too much? Dont member if the processor is locked or not. And the mobo I think is pretty good, now?
Click to expand...

Hard drives dont overclock to good :).
 
Make it into a emulation station, or just a plain file server.
 
guys can any1 give me alink to a tutorial how to set up a file server? As I understand I should be able to run the computer in a closet somewhere w/o minotr, keyboard, mouse etc... How will I change setting though etc.. Thanks.
 
quote:
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Originally posted by acra2
I've spent most my working weeks lauching PIII 800Mhz-1ghz 's in a skip, apparently there too slow......
Even worse, we're not allowed to give them a home..... so apparently that's what you do with a PIII 450...




you've got to be kidding me...Boeing wipes the drives of their old computers and donates them...

talk to your business, they might be able to get a tax break...I'm sure there are plenty of companies that would do all the work. It's such a waste to just throw them away...I can't believe they're doing it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As I work for the place that spends the taxes, we don't get tax breaks, and for that reason, the data on them is too sensitive to donate on the off chance that anything can be recovered and yes you could argue that you can get programs that write noughts and ones over the entire disk area but we have ways of recovering pass that (sometimes :D )
 
you can set it us as a file server easy...

hook it up to your lan, share a file on it copy things you want to back up, or dont feel like keeping on your pc, into that file.

you can also use that computer for DLing things, that way if it does get a virus its only on that pc and you can whipe it if need be.

so you can have anything you download in a shared file and you can acces it from your pc


acra2: they can donate the computers to me, i have free pickup (they dont even have to do anything, just dont shoot and dont lock up the dumpsters
 
Originally posted by acra2


As I work for the place that spends the taxes, we don't get tax breaks, and for that reason, the data on them is too sensitive to donate on the off chance that anything can be recovered and yes you could argue that you can get programs that write noughts and ones over the entire disk area but we have ways of recovering pass that (sometimes :D )
Click to expand...
so throw away the hard drives and donate the rest of the computer...
 
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