Extra Pentium II Box - What should I do with it?

[ghindo]

I got a free Pentium II box today, but I have no idea what to do with it! I've heard a bunch of suggestions so far - server, doorstop, mineral oil PC - but I'm still at a bit of a loss.

What do you guys think would be a good idea?

[Sef]

Do you want to make a server with it?

[ghindo]

Do you want to make a server with it?I dunno. I've never ran a server before and don't quite know what I could do with one.

[misfitpierce]

just put xubuntu on it then and make it a music machine or something. :)

[pelle.k]

htpc!
I have mine autologin, load openbox and freevo. Complete with suspend/hibernate funtionality from the remote control i hooked up. Of course it is networked, so i can play stuff from my "real" computer, using samba.

[luckykar]

You could always use it two make a decent firewall like IPcop ,
I have been running ipcop for years and I only ever run it on old hardware.

P2 still run fine with ipcop , long as you have at least 128 mb ram it will run quite well.

[ghindo]

Good suggestions so far. Someone on another forum mentioned that the amount of power a PII consumers might make running it impractical - is this true?

[luckykar]

Good suggestions so far. Someone on another forum mentioned that the amount of power a PII consumers might make running it impractical - is this true?

It wont use no where near the amount a new one does , especially if its got a small power supply I am using a 130 watt supply , newer machines have at least a 400- 500 watt supply these days , but yes it will still use power but not at a ridiculous rate like some people make out...

[n3tfury]

htpc!
I have mine autologin, load openbox and freevo. Complete with suspend/hibernate funtionality from the remote control i hooked up. Of course it is networked, so i can play stuff from my "real" computer, using samba.

a home theater PC from a PII? HT usually equates to decent resolution videos, and i'm pretty sure you're not going to get that with a PII.

i'd use it for a file server for your tunes, etc.

[K.Mandla]

Good suggestions so far. Someone on another forum mentioned that the amount of power a PII consumers might make running it impractical - is this true?
I hear that drivel all the time. It's only impractical if you decide it's impractical. And really, does a poor little Pentium II use that much more power than a Pentium 4HT with a 7800GTX and three hard drives? Nah.

By the way. ...

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/things-to-do-with-an-old-computer/

[n3tfury]

I hear that drivel all the time. It's only impractical if you decide it's impractical. And really, does a poor little Pentium II use that much more power than a Pentium 4HT with a 7800GTX and three hard drives? Nah.

By the way. ...

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/things-to-do-with-an-old-computer/

damn, that's a nice post, thanks

[mellowd]

My ubuntu server is essentially a file server and torrent box. You could do that.

[Bungo Pony]

I've got a Pentium 133 in my garage for a jukebox. It's got 3 DVD-ROM drives in it, a USB 2.0 card, 40M of RAM, and it's running Damn Small Linux.

Just an idea :)

[regomodo]

squid web cache server and torrent box.
perhaps slap a wifi card in and make it a wifi router?
maybe even put f@h on it but i doubt that thing will provide much

[markp1989]

put geexbox on it , and use it to play divx movies

[Limpan]

It wont use no where near the amount a new one does , especially if its got a small power supply I am using a 130 watt supply , newer machines have at least a 400- 500 watt supply these days , but yes it will still use power but not at a ridiculous rate like some people make out...

Why don't you take a look at this page (http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/computer-power-consumption.html)?

I think that the Pentium II is quite similar to the AMD K6-2 and thus it would be well below 100W of total power consumption (if you run it without a monitor). Modern systems actually don't use that much power either, few normal consumer systems go above 200W (including monitor).

[josys36]

Fill it with cement and use it has a boat anchor.

:)

Jason

[bobbocanfly]

damn, that's a nice post, thanks

+1. Another great post from KMandla :D

I have MPD running on a really crappy spare box. The only maintainence i need to do is SSH into it to update the MPD database, though im sure it could be done with Cron, im just too lazy to work it out :D

[tech9]

I got a free Pentium II box today, but I have no idea what to do with it! I've heard a bunch of suggestions so far - server, doorstop, mineral oil PC - but I'm still at a bit of a loss.

What do you guys think would be a good idea?

Pentium II....

take a shotgun to it! :guitar:

[pelle.k]

a home theater PC from a PII? HT usually equates to decent resolution videos, and i'm pretty sure you're not going to get that with a PII.
You might actually be right about that :)
However, i have two htpc:s set up. One use a k6-2 350, and the other a p3 450 (96 MB ram), and they both have ati rage (4mb ram) + tv-out. I guess that is as low as you can go. But they actually do play xvid and dvd movies at full res without dropped frames with perfect audio synch though...

[n3tfury]

You might actually be right about that :)
However, i have two htpc:s set up. One use a k6-2 350, and the other a p3 450 (96 MB ram), and they both have ati rage (4mb ram) + tv-out. I guess that is as low as you can go. But they actually do play xvid and dvd movies at full res without dropped frames with perfect audio synch though...

curious as to what resolution is considered full on your system?

[aaaantoine]

Put a larger HDD in it and configure it to crawl the web and download stuff that might be of interest to you.

[meindian523]

Make your main box a server and use the P2 to convert the rest of your family to *nix!I know I would have wanted to do that with my old P3 if I hadn't encountered Linux then and made the mistake of giving it to the guy who sold me my new assembled dual core.....

[lyceum]

Skip Xubuntu, throw Fluxbuntu on it and give it to someone in need of a PC. It cost you nothing anyway. The server idea is also good.

:popcorn:

[SunnyRabbiera]

there is pcfluxboxos too to play with

[linuxlizard]

yeah +1 for pcfluxboxos.
Load it up with pcfluxboxos, mame and a bunch of mame roms, pingus, wesnoth, supertux, creatures docking station and a bunch of other older games and give it to a needy kid. They can surf with opera, abiword will work well.

Or you could do what I did with my pentium 1- hook it up to your vic 20 or commodore 64 and use it as a hard drive.

http://www.64hdd.com/index_en.html

Or play with puppy linux for a while.

[NullHead]

I got a free Pentium II box today, but I have no idea what to do with it! I've heard a bunch of suggestions so far - server, doorstop, mineral oil PC - but I'm still at a bit of a loss.

What do you guys think would be a good idea?

Well I've got 2 pII like yours and mine just sit in the basement collecting dust and taking up space. I used to use one for some old games with win95 and dos .... just an idea.

[DigitalDuality]

d

[mips]

Give it to someone else that needs it.

[markp1989]

mail server (i reccomend citadel, it's easy as hell to setup :) )

webserver... so many cms's to play with... wordpress, drupal, joomla, pligg, phpbb, gallery2, etc..

ftp server

throw in the max amount of ram, at least a 128 vid card with tv-out of somekind, and hook it up to your tv and play downloaded movies.. no more burning discs... (may not be suitable for mythtv or anything like that, but it should just straight play files). Run the sound through a stereo reciever and quit burning cds to play on it.

i think there's tons of uses for old hardware. Heh... problem is i have 2 pII and one pIII i'm putting to good use right now. Too bad my main pc's board fried. I have 2 servers and a half built media center pc.. but no working desktop machine. :\

geexbox can play films with 64mb ram and a 400mhz cpu, so it may be worth looking at

[TreeFinger]

May I ask how you got a hold of it? I am hoping soon someone will offer me an older computer that I could throw a server distro on and play around with.

How could you work on a computer that has no monitor? When you are first setting it up it would have to have a monitor, correct?

Later would you be able to have no keyboard and mouse also by just logging into it remotely?

[pelle.k]

curious as to what resolution is considered full on your system?
800x600. This is a tv were talking about, and the video card only support tv-out at that resolution. It's a miracle i even got that old ati card to work with tv-out to be perfectly honest.

[mellowd]

May I ask how you got a hold of it? I am hoping soon someone will offer me an older computer that I could throw a server distro on and play around with.

How could you work on a computer that has no monitor? When you are first setting it up it would have to have a monitor, correct?

Later would you be able to have no keyboard and mouse also by just logging into it remotely?

Yup. I had a monitor plugged in when first installing my server but now all it has plugged in is the network cable and the power. I use ssh to do anything on it

[klange]

Yup. I had a monitor plugged in when first installing my server but now all it had plugged in is the network cable and the power. I use ssh to do anything on it
Same here, only since I have a full desktop environment on my server I prefer to use VNC

[ghindo]

By the way. ...

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/things-to-do-with-an-old-computer/This is a phenomenal link. Thank you so much!

[sammydee]

I've got a 600mhz p3 that isn't THAT much faster than your pII.

I use it for a TONNE of really useful stuff. I can use it as an SSH proxy when I'm in a wireless cafe with my notebook, it has a 250GB drive in it and I mount the drive over the LAN using sshfs so it appears local, it runs azureus 24/7, it runs a web server, it runs a VNC server so I can tunnel through ssh and get a full gui up wherever I am in the world.

It runs xfce acceptably well. Try fluxbox, that should work great on old hardware.

sam

Forgot to add - I also have a VERY nice sound card in it with a lot of mixing facilities and I can access them all as well as play music through ssh.