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View Full Version : When is reuse a waste of time?



saphil
August 19th, 2011, 05:37 PM
I was trying to get a handle on the growth of capacity over the last 10 years -

I have a Compac Proliant ML350.
It has a Pentium III around 860mHz, it has 128 MB of ram, and one internal drive space as well as a hot-swap drive cage that can take 11 more drives. I could probably get a stripped version of Ubuntu to run on it, or maybe puppyLinux, but I am conflicted.

It is probably from sometime no earlier than March of 2000, but no later than 2002. Would it make more sense to sell it to a scrap-recycling company and use the proceeds to buy a PDA, or would it make more sense to replace its guts with modern mobo and processor.

cottfcfan
August 19th, 2011, 05:46 PM
All a matter of opinion I suppose.
Most modern computers have around 4+ gigs of ram, and 1TB+ storage space.
Also technology in this area has come on in leaps and bounds over the last 10 years.
With the cost and hassle of replacing the guts, it maybe better to call it a day and move on to something newer.
My opinion only of course, and cost may be a big consideration.

Oxwivi
August 19th, 2011, 05:56 PM
Replace the guts? Are you serious? I'm a Pentium IV user and even finding a compatible RAM is out of the question. They have stopped manufacturing years - eons (computer age of course) - ago.

Inodoro Pereyra
August 19th, 2011, 06:03 PM
I agree with Oxwivi.
So you replace the guts. That means new MoBo, processor and RAM. What's left? An old hard drive and PSU?
Get rid of it. It makes no sense to waste money on a 10 year old computer.

saphil
August 19th, 2011, 07:07 PM
I agree with Oxwivi.
So you replace the guts. That means new MoBo, processor and RAM. What's left? An old hard drive and PSU?
Get rid of it. It makes no sense to waste money on a 10 year old computer.

This seems like the best answer for me, now that you mention it. It would probably be hard to find new parts that would even fit in the old box.

Thanks

Wolf

Inodoro Pereyra
August 19th, 2011, 10:31 PM
You're welcome. :)

My advise: take the money you were gonna spend on the upgrade, + whatever money you get from the recycler, and buy yourself a cheap computer. Wal Mart is selling a Toshiba Satellite for $278. It's not fast (1 GHz), but it's new, has 2 gigs of RAM, and a new HDD. For the price, you can't beat it.

Famicube64
August 19th, 2011, 11:01 PM
Reuse is a waste of time when it was slow enough in the first place to warrent new hardware.

:popcorn:

kmsalex
August 20th, 2011, 03:55 AM
You run linux man, don't you do this stuff for fun? i've run lubuntu on p III with a 233mhz clock (laptop) 128 ram and it didn't touch the swap until you opened more then 1-2 tabs in chrome. if you've got a spare hour burn a Lubutnu disk and install it (you can even run live in 128 but its super slow). if you want to do video editing on the thing throw it away. but if you want an excuse to play with more linux and give the hardware a new lease on life go at it.

http://lubuntu.net/

b2zeldafreak
August 20th, 2011, 04:25 AM
You run linux man, don't you do this stuff for fun? i've run lubuntu on p III with a 233mhz clock (laptop) 128 ram and it didn't touch the swap until you opened more then 1-2 tabs in chrome. if you've got a spare hour burn a Lubutnu disk and install it (you can even run live in 128 but its super slow). if you want to do video editing on the thing throw it away. but if you want an excuse to play with more linux and give the hardware a new lease on life go at it.

http://lubuntu.net/

It could also function as a stripped down server. For example, I think it could handle rTorrent if you can find a small enough server distro.