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PrimoTurbo

Member

Registered: 2008-06-26

Posts: 109

Website

What to do with an old desktop PC?

I have a Compaq Desktop En, P3 733MHz, 256 SDRAM, 40 GB HD.

So far I got Arch on it, running openbox. Runs alright, Firefox runs fine, flash a little slow but still good. I have to admit that an optimized XP runs faster/smoother on this PC. I found this the case for many older computers.

The question is what should I try with this machine? I do not plan on giving it away, I want to do something cool and useful. Is there anything interesting, educational or useful that I should do. What do you guys do with your spare computers?

So far I'm thinking I'll use it as a dedicated test webserver, or maybe as a game server. But my connection is only 5Mbp/s - (max of 500kb/s down and 70kb/s up) - I already got 3 other computers that use this connection, often at the same time. 2 of them limited to 100kb/s down & 20kb/s up and my personal one unlimited. I also torrent close to 24/7, especially seeding constantly between 30-40kb/s, but I stop bitorrent when gaming.

Also I wanted to setup a vnc server on this machine, so I can remotely administrate it. I wanted something with graphics, so I used tightvnc. The problem is that when I connect to this machine, I don't get openbox, I get some odd green background with xterm running. Some type a low end X or something. Any ideas why it does this. The command I use is vncserver :1 to start and vncviewer localhost:1 to connect to the vnc server. Are there graphical versions of vnc servers/viewer that are compatible with windows xp/work on xp?

Last edited by PrimoTurbo (2008-11-26 17:14:07)

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,223

Website

Re: What to do with an old desktop PC?

With a spare pc I would install a fileserver to serve all my media (music, video, images) on my network with NFS or even elisa. You can work headless through ssh (which I prefer over vnc).

Another option I'm considering would be a backup-server to backup all data on the network on 1 disk or even making backups to external clients (bacula is up to thos kind of things).

Zl.

Last edited by zenlord (2008-11-26 11:12:17)

11010010110

Member

Registered: 2008-01-14

Posts: 284

Re: What to do with an old desktop PC?

733 MHz sounds like P3 not P4

pentium 3s use way less electricity than more modern PCs. use it as the computer that is up most of the time

i use P3 1000 MHz 256 M (dell optiplex GX150) with KDE 3.5 and it runs excellent

PrimoTurbo

Member

Registered: 2008-06-26

Posts: 109

Website

Re: What to do with an old desktop PC?

I meant to say Pentium 3, my bad.

elmer_42

Member

From: /na/usa/ca

Registered: 2008-10-11

Posts: 427

Re: What to do with an old desktop PC?

If I was you I would set up a firewall or a fileserver. Both are easy to set up, and one of my favorite IPTV shows, Hak.5, has episodes about both. Specifically, see episode 2x08, which uses Smoothwall for firewall software, and episode 2x02, which uses FreeNAS as a file server.

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[ lamy + pilot ] [ arch64 | wmii ] [ ati + amd ]

fumbles

Member

Registered: 2006-12-22

Posts: 246

Re: What to do with an old desktop PC?

Also I wanted to setup a vnc server on this machine, so I can remotely administrate it. I wanted something with graphics, so I used tightvnc. The problem is that when I connect to this machine, I don't get openbox, I get some odd green background with xterm running. Some type a low end X or something. Any ideas why it does this. The command I use is vncserver :1 to start and vncviewer localhost:1 to connect to the vnc server. Are there graphical versions of vnc servers/viewer that are compatible with windows xp/work on xp?

VNC sessions read from a different file to one where you would be logging on locally. IIRC its .vnc/xstartup
What you are seeing is the default window manager (twm ?)

VNC is platform indepentant, so i can VNC from Windows XP to say Linux to say some Sun Solaris SPARC system. Also they don't have to be the same VNC programme, eg one could be running RealVNC, another TightVNC, and another whatever. Both RealVNC and tightVNC work on Linux and Windows. I personally prefer realVNC.