what to do with a very old computer?

[wired14]

a friend just gave me an ancient machine. It is pentium 1 i guess, 266Mhz, 32 mb ram , 3.2gb. It has onboard lan too. I just boot it off with a linux live cd and it works ok.
What can i do with it ? I was thinking something like a firewall or something but i am already behind a router.

[mbentley]

well one thing that i did was turn a p200 machine into an answering machine/word processing machine. it works pretty well for that... you just need to have a voice modem to get the answering machine part to work...

i also have a p233 that is a aim/irc/mp3 player box that i used to chat on and listen to music...

i can't think of a whole lot else you can use it for since you have a router...

[wired14]

Originally posted by mbentley
well one thing that i did was turn a p200 machine into an answering machine/word processing machine. it works pretty well for that... you just need to have a voice modem to get the answering machine part to work...

i also have a p233 that is a aim/irc/mp3 player box that i used to chat on and listen to music...

i can't think of a whole lot else you can use it for since you have a router...



how did you turn a p200 into an answering machine?

[Paradoxmaker]

Where I live (Ft worth Tx) The city once or twice a year has a recycling drive to keep old electronics out of the trash , to reduce lead contamination in the landfills. They will take any and all electronics from calulators to servers.

The city will take what they can from the dropped off equip, refurb what they can, and use it in city programs for computer classes for the underprivelidged. The unusable and fried stuff gets broken down for reclaiming of the lead and gold.

[mbentley]

Originally posted by wired14



how did you turn a p200 into an answering machine?

i got a program called ez-voice (http://www.internetsoftsolution.com/) and it runs the answering machine program. but you need to have a voice modem. it must have voice compatability to work as an answering machine...

[Artyboy]

a 266 will fold :).

[don256us]

1) a 266 is a PII not a pentium. The fastest pentium was 233.

I used an old PII 266 as a file server, print server, data backup, gateway, firewall, etc. machine. It was a real work horse for my network. I recently upgraded that machine to a 400 but I sold the 266 for $50. Just goes to show that a 266 can have some real value. Oh, I had it maxed out with 256 MB EDO RAM. That helped a lot with XP Pro.

Many modems come with software to answer the phone. I had problems with doing this so I just bought a cheap $10 USD answering machine.

[mbentley]

Originally posted by don256us
1) a 266 is a PII not a pentium. The fastest pentium was 233.

ah, good point... i didn't even notice that it was a 266... for some reason my mind was thinking 233 :D

pentium 2's are still pretty good machines, really. i have a p2 laptop that is great for browsing the internet and e-mail...

i also use it as a backup webserver when i need to take my server offline...

[su root]

If you feel like learning linux, there's tons of things you can do with it. I have a pair of boxes, a little bit more ancient than yours, and they do everything on my network... NAT, Firewall, Caching, File servers, web servers, mail servers, etc. Great way to learn linux if you don't want to install it on your main box.

[wired14]

i just opened it up today and i saw that it can not accept pci cards we use.It has different pci slots :( That means , no internet access. I have linux on my other machine . LIve linux cd's froze twice on that thing. I guess 700mb is too much to handle. I boot it up with " damn small linux" which is only 50mb and it has been up and running since last night.

[Artyboy]

Are they ISA cards? Just go to your local pc store and ask for an ISA ethernet adapter. You might be able to pick one up for next to nothing in the classifieds here too.

[wired14]

Originally posted by Artyboy
Are they ISA cards? Just go to your local pc store and ask for an ISA ethernet adapter. You might be able to pick one up for next to nothing in the classifieds here too.


i do not know what ISA is .

[moz_21]

Originally posted by wired14



i do not know what ISA is .

Its a longer, black slot.

[wired14]

it has one of these.

[fletch]

By chance, I think I have a couple ISA network cards...

[diggingforgold]

Originally posted by don256us
1) a 266 is a PII not a pentium. The fastest pentium was 233.

Grandpa had a 300MHz PI (wondering if it was somehow overclocked). Built by Sony (one of the earlier Vaio PC's). I nor anyone else ever overclocked it, so it came stock like that from the manufacturor. So I know that there are faster than 233 pentiums out there in brand rigs. I dunno if they were specially built or just clocked a little higher.

Originally posted by mbentley
Pentium 2's are still pretty good machines, really. i have a p2 laptop that is great for browsing the internet and e-mail...

PII's are excellent machines. Brothers got our old PII compaq upgraded (PII-450) and tweaked. He can play SimCity4 and any other games he has with ease. I wouldn't mind getting ahold of it to act as a server-- compaq made some rather quite computers back then.