Old PCs

[dcer]

I have 4 'very' old pcs waiting for me. And I was wondering what I could do with them.

There are two IBM 468/386 machines, a pentium 100 and an unknown one which should be also somewhere in this range :) they come together with two monitors or three, three keyboards, some mouses...

Any suggestions what to do with them? Or are they garbage to be thrown away? :)

I read old hardware can be used as servers but I doubt these have modems or anything...

[PryGuy]

Wow, what an antique! :)
Why do you need modems? Or, if you plan using a dial-up connection just buy yourself a PCI modem and/or ethernet cards and plug it in. It's very cheap nowadays. But first make sure your PCs have PCI slots and all.

[prizrak]

If you stuff some NIC's in them any of those (maybe not the 386) can be used as a firewall/router or an FTP server. Or you could just throw DSL (Damn Small Linux) on them and use them as desktops. Another thing is you could cluster them together and run as a single machine. If you don't wanna use them maybe set them up to be able to access the net and donate to a school or something.

[dcer]

I haven't seen them up-close yet, so I don't know if they have pci slots. Actualy they were sort of thrown away by a school. Someone I know works there and thought of giving them to me instead of throwing away.

That cluster thing sounds good, I already have a switch at home I could use for a network but have no idea how to create a cluster. What distro/tools do you use for that?

Also a desktop would be nice too. I could give that to someone I know if one could write/print documents with it and play some simple games maybe. I found an arcticle that used two 468 and one was for the gui and the other for the rest. Can't find it now, but that would be cool too. I'd probably get a weird look if I'd pass all four pcs as one to him in sense: "you can't be serious." :)

The cluster could be used for folding. I might even get two more machines if they haven't been thrown away yet. They used to belong to our family, but we then passes them down to our relatives. They have a new pc now and don't use the old ones.

I'd would be funny if I'd returned the pcs to the school as a cluster :) but I think they have new ones. Most if not all schools here are well equiped.

[steve.horsley]

Do you have a boat? They should make good mud-weights.

[newuser111]

i agree with the suggestion to install damn small linux on the pentium 100 or an ubuntu server install, and then apt-get openbox or fluxbox

the others are too obsolete to be of any use

[otake-tux]

build a cluster. its worth for the experience alone. there lots of documentation on building different types of cluster servers. You can start reading about it at wikipedia.

[dcer]

Do you have a boat? They should make good mud-weights.

Sadly not :( but I wouldn't mind you buying me one :p

Seriously, I know they won't be of much use. I just want fiddle around with them :D


i agree with the suggestion to install damn small linux on the pentium 100...

I think that will be the first thing I'll try. And then the cluster. Someone recomended debian to me and Linux-ha (plus some tools). I can't wait to get started :)

EDIT: and wouldn't you know it there it is Linux HA in the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster).

EDIT2: thanks for the ideas and info everyone :D

[poofyhairguy]

http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/

[mcduck]

Wow, what an antique! :)
Why do you need modems? Or, if you plan using a dial-up connection just buy yourself a PCI modem and/or ethernet cards and plug it in. It's very cheap nowadays. But first make sure your PCs have PCI slots and all.
Most likely 486/386 won't have PCI slots, but ISA slots instead..

[dcer]

To install and run Knoppix on your PC, you'll need:

* Pentium-class processor, preferably 300MHz+
* 64MB RAM
* A spare partition on your disk, min 3GB
* (of course) a Knoppix CD


http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/knx-install.htm (http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/knx-install.htm).



Most likely 486/386 won't have PCI slots, but ISA slots instead..

When I get them, I'll know more. That will be in a month or so, for now I just wanted to know what my options were. :)