QOTD: What Do You Do With Your Old PCs?

[raptor550]

Virtuallize maaaaan. Install Linux, FreeNAS, DSL... use them as routers, servers, web browsing PCs for others to use because they can't touch my good PCs!

 

[marraco]

Not what I Do, but what I would LIKE to do:

To put my old Athlon X2, with 2 Gb of RAM on a PCI/PCI-E slot on my i7 mother, to serve as additional processors.

 

[cekasone]

I donate them. Honestly

 

[blackbyron]

I either recycle computers, donate computers in goodwill, or give it to my friends.

 

[mysticalzero]

Convert it to a router using pfsense. That's what I did to my P3.

 

[deltatux]

all my own rigs have a 5 yrs lifespan, after that I ditch them as hand-me-downs to my parents and when their machine is older than the one I give them, they go to my computer graveyard (a room in my basement). There, whenever I have time, I would mark which is destined to a recycling centre or which is for donation or which can be used again as a server or spare parts depending on if there's any damage or dead parts.

 

[ph3412b07]

sell components on ebay. buy new parts on ebay/newegg with cashback. rinse and repeat.

 

[cablechewer]

My 286 is approaching 25 years old and is in perfect running order complete with 20MB MFM HD and EGA monitor. I will likely try to sell it as an antique in a few years.

Most of my other systems have been given to relatives. If they have significant residual value they have been sold to them at a pretty steep discount (about half of what I think I can ebay them for). The ones that I keep too long to give away gather around the house fulfilling useful roles like door stops, book ends or monitor stands.

 

[Guest]

Well for some reason I just cant throw or sell hardware ... i have boxes ( several of them ) with old Mb`s and stacks of ram ranging from edo to ddr2 ... even have two disassembled laptops ... Any thing that can be reused ..is reused ... as for the rest ... well I have a small lab .. where I do weird and wonderful stuff with them ,like testing for min reqs of Os`s and then trying to get them to run on less , testing linux distros OC testing ... heck I even tried to multiplex 2 PIII machines with a custom build PCI multiplexer ( with some success ) ...
Nothing is wasted with me … Have a home made router made out of a PII , a Gateway machine that doubles as a media hub , web server , VPN server and torrent client on a Sempron 2800 + with 768 of ram , and I use my previous Pc ( Athlon FX , 2 Gb ram , Ati X1950) as HTPC .
As for the older ones .. as I said .. get a low req. Linux distro like Damn small or Tiny Me and you can do almost any thing on them .So they are actually still quite usable .

 

[descalada]

If they're still working, you gotta keep them just in case you want to have a LAN party over IPX!

 

[chuckdalton]

[citation][nom]VioMeTriX[/nom]well if that is the case you are as stupid as your spelling... its throw not through... never heard of someone stupid enough to overspell..... but even if you were kidding you were stupid enough to talk dumb shit to techs who love computers and give a crap about the environment... personally if i ever saw you do it, id drown your F***ing ass.... scumbagoh and you were stupid enough to double post that[/citation]

Ouch, talk to your doctor and tell him to increase your medication dude.

 

[pochacco007]

those old computers from the days, 486, were pretty fun to tinker with then today. people dealt with jumpers and driver settings and performed their own settings as compared to today. today, computers have been casualized or dumbed down as everything you buy is plug and play.

btw, i throw my old computer away if i don't need it any more.

 

[giovanni86]

I keep them, i find in the future most of my old PC's will be able to run some classic games and even some modern games. In turn i hope in the future i will have enough to have my own mini/big LAN gaming room. That is of course when i have my own house. Old PC's have such great memories that its really hard for me to discard them when i have built all of them from the ground up.

 

[MU_Engineer]

It depends on what it is and if it still works. The only "obsoleted" computers of my own that I've had so far are two laptops, both of which were too broken to repair or continue using. I am still using the only desktop I've ever had, so I can't comment on that. I took the hard drives, RAM, and wireless cards out of both of the laptops and then disposed of the rest of the laptop in the electronics waste at the local "hazardous" waste pickup place. I used the HDDs to put in my file server (which is an old desktop I got dumpster diving) and my HTPC (another old desktop I got dumpster diving.) I ended up selling most of the RAM to other people and sold one of the wireless cards as well.

When I upgrade my 939 X2 desktop, I will repurpose it to replace my old PIII file server. The PIII just has a little cheap PCI SATA card in it and horribly bottlenecks the hard drives. The desktop's board is PCIe-based and will yield greatly improved performance over the old PIII. I'll probably get rid of the PIII parts at that time, especially if I know I can pick up better parts from the dumpster at that time 😀

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]jerfle[/nom]Trickle down theory. I use my family to justify new hardware. "Well little brother your video card is struggling with that game." So I buy me a faster card and give him mine. Everybody wins!! Old, outdated PC's usually become toys to play with. Overclocking to breaking point.[/citation]

What if your family all has newer hardware that you do like mine does?

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Set them up as servers, firewall/routers, or give them to the needy. With Xubuntu my scrap-out cutoff is a K6-2/500MHz with 256MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive.[/citation]

I generally put my minimum as "whatever is about the same speed as the stuff they're throwing out at my favorite local computer shop." If it's slower than that, I get rid of it and pick another box off their discard pile. Currently they throw out 1 GHz PIIIs and older but keep >1 GHz Tualatins and P4s/Athlon XPs.

 

[p05esto]

Yep, they turn into PCs for the rest of the family and my parents. Also one for a server/nas and decent backup-computer in case my main one goes down. We ahve about 5 decent computers running in my house.

 

[Villers]

Music jukeboxes, net machines, spare parts for friends/fam. I have i have a 900mhz that I loaded up with old ram and harddrives in my garage hooked up to an old aiwa bookshelf stereo with half my music collection on it. I also use for looking up truck parts and browsing the net using a little $20 wifi dongle.
I built a similar machine for my buddy he just uses it for music in his garage.

my soon to be old system will either be a server or htpc.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Since I'm a mac user, I sell mine on at a pretty good price. The "Apple Tax" may make them more expensive in the first place but second hand macs go for one hell of a lot more than most PCs. Coupled with a decent educational discount, I can keep my macs up to date year on year with a relatively small outlay. Even broken macs go for more than a lot of PCs.

 

[Guest]

I recently found my 1st pc (IBM 8MHz, 640kb Ram, 20 Mb HD and one 1440 kb floppydrive) and my 1st printer (IMB Proprinter XL24) at the back of my retired system storage.
I remember trying to install Win 3.1 on it; man, that was slow.
The printer was used for printing (draft reports from LaTeX; anybody remember the charecteristic rattle and hum?

 

[viometrix]

[citation][nom]chuckdalton[/nom]Ouch, talk to your doctor and tell him to increase your medication dude.[/citation]


nah man i just really get fed up with people talking stupid.... in this day, age, and economy only the strong survive....and well you see what happens to stupidity.... you either commit crime or end up on the wrong end of one.... for the other people that end up victims i wish people woudl just work together and make this world a better place.... but environmental destruction peeves me to no end, i am sad we are leaving this world to our children

 

[Luscious]

I once had an old P3 notebook that I hated so much I took it over to a friend's place and made him run over it with his Hummer.

 

[Guest]

Calm down VioMeTrix!!! You might pop a blood vessel and all that machismo is for naught. Seriously, get a life and quit trash talking.

Ossy

 

[tmike]

a hat... a broach... a pterodactyl...

 

[Guest]

recycle them at local electronics recycle plant.. only PC/dvd/tv stuff though Console video game hardware has a collect factor.

use for something else.

OLD OLD PC will play dos windows95/98 games with out much hassle


linux box

windows 7 beta try box

A box to screw around on with out messing up your main pc's

servers file servers, media servers game server.