$75 computer from school good deal?

[Inositle]

One of the local schools is selling off some of its old computers. They're Pentium 2 300mhz's w/ a 3gig hard drive and 64mb of ram. There's a monitor included along with a mouse and keyboard. They're probably all Dell's - as that is all our school has.

Does this sound like a good deal? I'm planning on using it as a linux box for fun and/or server usage.

Thanks

[9mmCensor]

Yeah thats a sweet deal if it includes a monior. Have fun messing around with linux and remember to fold for team 32.

[CamH]

At that kind of price, you could probably part them out and make a profit if you wanted to.

They're also great learning computers.

Remember, you can never have too much of a good thing. (computers) :D

[Inositle]

Maybe I should get 2-3 and start a server farm :)

I'm taking the ACT the day of the sale and I'm not sure if they have anything else.

The monitor is going to be a 15" crt, but should be fine for linux.

I'm dual-booting XP with Mandrake 9.1 right now, any suggestions for what would be best as a fun/server distro for this new box?

Thanks

[CamH]

If you want to put some effort into getting the OS just how you like it, I recommend Debian or Gentoo.

[eab]

Hey I would get one then load up a old copy of win95 osr2 whip out my old joystick and play some old dos games. Also then dule boot it for linux for a small storage server.

[nealric]

Thats not too bad.
If they are standard atx- you can get a refurb board, 1ghz proc, and ram for under 50 and end up with a pretty capable computer for $150.

[Inositle]

Yeah... I think i'll pass on this.
I have a $103 speeding ticket to pay, and $106 to pay for my ram i bought.
I'll buy a cell phone, some smart fan II's, and a fan controller instead :)

[CrystalMethod]

You could probably sell the HDD's for half the cost of the entire system to companies and shops who have old systems and aren't willing to drop the cash to do a full upgrade. Some of the older systems can't take HDD's larger than 8.4 Gig. Other's nothing larger than 32 Gig. While I would really like to have everyone upgrade, and quit using Win NT, and Win95/98 for their POS software (POS = Point Of Sale, not the other acronymn). Some people refuse to upgrade. I'd have a look into what local shops are using as thier POS, and see if there is any sort of opportunity there.

[jazztrumpet216]

Originally posted by nealric
Thats not too bad.
If they are standard atx- you can get a refurb board, 1ghz proc, and ram for under 50 and end up with a pretty capable computer for $150.

That really depends on the chipset that the PII is using. Some would not support processors that fast, even with a slotket. Mine never would, back in the day...

[nil_esh]

I like the Pentium II. I bought a mobo from an old Gateway with a P2-266 for $25 and have had good luck with it. That machine will run stable even in extreme heat (I've used it in a garage before for several hours during the summer in Florida). And that is with no CPU fan, only a heatsink on the CPU (and case fans). It also plays compressed video such as DivX/MPEG4 reasonably well, better than my old K6-450 which was supposedly faster.