Old/crappy pc/laptop users, come chat and share here!

[Thingymebob]

Just did a crappy old compaq PII 466 for family. built for NT4 with ISApnp ATI Rage Turbo video, max of 256MB of sdram (pc100) installed, but refused to recognise any disk over 10G, Installed ubuntu-minimal (8.10) dist-upgrade to 9.04 then LXDE. Spent some time playing with sysv-rc then profiled boot. and it runs reasonably well. Used a greasemonkey script with firefox to force all flash to low quality and I'm pretty pleased with the web browsing experience and overall performance even runs Ooo fine.

[Canyonfan]

Just Rebuilt a mega machine of a beast lol Micron pc originaly built specificaly for General Motors. My dad gave it to me when they retired it in 2003. Originaly built with 128mb ram p4 1.72g processor cd r/rw 8mb internal video and 20 gig hard drive. Now sporting 100gigs 512mb ram 512 mb video cd r/rw and dvd rw new case from a compaq and Ubuntu 9.04. talk about a much needed update I'l never buy a new computer... just new parts lol

[Tipped OuT]

talk about a much needed update I'l never buy a new computer... just new parts lol

Easy for you to say, what about us guys with our laptops.

[Skippy_X]

Cool Thread.

I work in a refubishing shop for a nonprofit charitable organization. We recycle or refurbish old systems. Most of the stuff for sale in the shop is P4 class, 1.8-3.0 GHz. We break down most of the P3 machines and harvest whatever components we can for sale to people looking for parts. Most of what we get is recycled - it's way too old to be useful to most people.

It's a bit of a geek playground.

I've got three of those old P3 IPaqs (exactly like the one of the front page, only 700-800 MHz, 512 megs 133MHz ram, 40 GB) on the shelf right now. I loaded Xubuntu on them and priced them at $80 (including keyboard, crt monitor & mouse). I figured they'd be great web browsing machines for a spare room - the type of thing someone could toss into a kid's room and not have to worry about them borking the install w/ malware.

We haven't sold one yet. As I said, it's an experiment. I was just curious to see if there was a market for that sort of thing.

[texasjim]

Cool Thread.

I work in a refubishing shop for a nonprofit charitable organization. We recycle or refurbish old systems. Most of the stuff for sale in the shop is P4 class, 1.8-3.0 GHz. We break down most of the P3 machines and harvest whatever components we can for sale to people looking for parts. Most of what we get is recycled - it's way too old to be useful to most people.

It's a bit of a geek playground.
.

Hey, you may be my hardware-provider-of-choice. I get most of my stuff from the local Goodwill store. So far I have built up to an AMD3100 x64 and a P4 2.2G. Still have some parts from my Dad's 166Mhz machine, the screw holes are about worn ouut from all the changes.
Also have built 3 1800Mhz machines for nephew & grandkids, with 8.04 and gnome they e-mail and surf and play games just fine.

Take a look at the Edubuntu add-on it may help your sales on those boxes.

Enjoy

Jim

[Skippy_X]

Hey, you may be my hardware-provider-of-choice. I get most of my stuff from the local Goodwill store. So far I have built up to an AMD3100 x64 and a P4 2.2G. Still have some parts from my Dad's 166Mhz machine, the screw holes are about worn ouut from all the changes.
Also have built 3 1800Mhz machines for nephew & grandkids, with 8.04 and gnome they e-mail and surf and play games just fine.

Take a look at the Edubuntu add-on it may help your sales on those boxes.

Enjoy

Jim

No kidding?

I work at the Goodwill Computer Works store in Houston. I'm the tech that builds the systems there. It's really a pretty cool gig. I get piles of "junk" to play w/.

I'd love to put more *nix out on the sales floor, but the powers that be insist on windows. Since I've already got 150 (or so) systems on the shelves I've got a little leeway, but not much. The only relatively modern system we've got for sale w/ Linux is a Gateway all-in-one thing w/ Jaunty loaded. The rest are low end systems (pIII) Not much more than internet appliances, really.

If the Computer Works is the place you're talking about, give me a holler next time you're in the store!

[venator260]

Reading through this thread has given me the urge to mess around with the parent's recently retired 667 Mhz eMachines box. My challenge with this one when it was their main computer was to get the RAM usage down as low as possible and still have something that my sister liked (and with 128 megs, that was a bit difficult). Now that wiping Windows ME is a possibility (had to keep it to print, never could get that to work in Linux), as well as having no need to keep my sister happy, I am free to play around.

(now if only I had a computer with enough RAM for virtualbox to experiment)

[texasjim]

Skippy-x
I go to the Beaumont store,'cause I live in Pt. Neches. However I'm in Houston once
or twice a month, now I want to come see your store. I expect it's bigger than the Bmt. one.
My private label machines are called BFJ's (Built From Junk).
BTW, do y'all have 'sr citizens' day on Wednesday? LOL

Jim

[medic563]

What is the best version of Ubuntu to run on my old HP Omnibook 4150 with 256mb ram? I am running Ubuntu 9.04 and it is really slow.

Thanks.

[XubuRoxMySox]

I'm told that MoonOS (LXDE version) is awesome for older 'puters because it's basically minimal Ubuntu with the uber-lightweight LDXE desktop environment and because it already comes with many of the drivers and "proprietary" drivers and stuff - little to no fiddling with ndiswrapper to make wifi work, etc. It's kinda sorta like "Mint Lite."

Has anyone used it? Is that description accurate?

I haven't tried it yet because my "test" computer is committed to another project and my internet downloads are limited (good ol' Wildblue satellite Fair Access Policy).

-Robin