
I have a P3 - 700Mhz, 196MB RAM, 16GB HD. She isn't much to look at, but I'm thinking that there must be a good use for her.
Today I installed BeOS Max v4beta1 - seems like a pretty fun thing to check out. Alas - it crashes on startup, so it looks like this probably wont work.
I may also try out the Jacklab (www.jacklab.org) audio Linux distro - though I've tried Linux in various flavors on 4 different occasions now, and never once have I got a machine to work properly, and each time I've spent several days of time trying to do so.
So I'd like to do something fun with this machine...without creating a time sink. Ideas? I've thought about using it as a MAME/gaming machine running Windows XP or 98, or trying to turn it into an all-freeware music making machine.
Anyone else have suggestions?
Windows Home Server RC1 if you want.
Otherwise MAME machine inside a home made arcade cabinet.
There are a couple of distros to look at still - FreeBSD for one, or rather NetBSD. I haven't looked at in awhile, but back when I was a regular FreeBSD user, I believe NetBSD was slated to run on anything under the sun with a processor. Any BSD gurus out there?
Anyways, I'd recommend grabbing a cheap but big drive (160GB or so) and turn it into a file server / music server. Might have some latency issues with the older processor, but you wouldn't need to mess with the RAM at all. Are you able to hook it into a wired network? Always better to run a server off of wired rather than wireless.
For the sake of all relevant deities, please avoid Windows98 on the box if you're going to make a server out of it.
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Turn it into a linux based radius server, and setup guest accounts so people can log onto your wireless network without having to fool with MAC address filters, or inputting long WPA2 passphrases.
@dongyrn: In my old house we ran open BSD on pretty much the same box though it only had 128MB RAM. It doubled as an entry point to the house network, assigning IP's and pretty much protecting us from random attacks (which we did get occasionally) and as a music file server that could also remotely burn CD's - though the CD needed to be in the tray... so it wasn't much of a feature
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Hmm, very interesting, I'm reading up on FreeRadius now.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I can do that easy with a wireless Windows network. Isn't that just called an unsecure network?
Symbiotic I second the get a bigger hard drive and just turn it into a media/music server idea. I did this at home with an old AMD 1500 works well running XP. It also runs my Team Speak server.
Been thinking of using it also as a print server or give it some more functionality as it still seems like a real waste for as little as it is really used.
I use my old computer as a torrenting station. I wouldn't mind leaving a computer I don't care much for on for 24/7. External HDs work better for storage needs, so long as there's a USB 2 port.
Thanks for all the ideas, folks. It should be noted that I do have a PC at home running Windows XP. It acts primarily as a media server right now - serving MP3s to my 360 and over the web via Orb. It would be nice to use it for something else, though - like music. So I'll consider maybe using this older machine as the server and reformatting the other PC as a music-maker....
But keep the ideas coming - I like some of the other ideas such as NetBSD and what not, but the main concern is the amount of time it would take to get something running. As I said, I really don't want it to be a time sink...
Music should be delicious.
I love re-purposing really old PC hardware. I have an ancient P-100 that I snagged on it's way to the dumpster at work several years ago. Packed it with 4 large HD's and it runs NASLite and is a media server for my home network. I run it headless, powered off a UPS. Works great with XBMC as a frontend.
EDIT: Talk about easy - it boots off a floppy. Couldn't be simpler to setup and AFAIK it runs on just about anything.
If it's not too loud, that would make an excellent firewall machine. You might have to add a network card, but those are cheap as potato chips.
I use a Soekris net4801 running OpenBSD as my firewall. I really like doing firewalling with an operating system instead of an appliance, because it gives me extremely precise control. I like the 4801 because it's totally silent, but I used to use a P3/733 for the same purpose.
Would also make a nice Asterisk box if you're interested in VOIP. Or, of course, you could add a big drive and use it as a server.
I don't suggest mixing either of those WITH firewalling... your firewall needs to be locked down, not sharing files or phones.
I'm using a Celeron 466 for a file server to store all of my music and a shared iTunes library.
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Agreed on the get big drive, make file server idea. I've had very good success making super cheap VMware Server (free version) boxes using CentOS Linux 4.4. Install Linux without X, set up Samba, configure some shares, profit.
You could even do it with Knoppix and the "save configuration to a floppy" feature, although I've never tried it.
Legion, are you running Linux on your media server? Do you have a good link to point to that shows how to do that with iTunes?
I thought about setting up our media server that way, but i ended up using a mac mini, to make it easier to sync up our ipods. Couldn't figure out any way to make that work with a Linux box.
I talked to a friend at MS last night about this, and I'm intrigued. It may be just what I'm looking for. Does anyone know whether or not I'll be able to install other apps on this? Mainly I'm thinking about installing Orb and iTunes (for network and web sharing of my media)...
Music should be delicious.
It's windows so why not?
Turns out it probably isn't necessary. The server has a web-based portal that I can use, much in the way I use Orb I think. And it plays nicely with OS X, so I can probably just point my iTunes installs to the network folder containing all my music and voila!
This seems really promising!
Music should be delicious.
I would install open BSD and make it into a quake 3 server.
I'm actually planning on doing this by the end of the month.
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Hot and covered in ketchup.
Well, there seems to be some confusion as to whether or not WHS will be available for purchase, or if I'll only be able to get it (post-beta/RC) if I buy an all-in-one hardware device from someone like HP. If the former, I'm definitely in. If the latter, I'm definitely out.
Meanwhile, I've decided to keep this machine and slowly upgrade it over the next 6 months or so - hopefully to the point where it will make a nice X-Mas gift to someone in my family who is using an older and slower machine. That's my goal, anyway...
Music should be delicious.