Okay so it's now 24 years since item 11 in this conference was
entered (1001 uses for an obselete PC).  It's time to talk about
all those old but not-so-obsolete computers that still have
viable uses.  So this is the Old Computer Item.

31 responses total.

I've been finding computers tend to accumulate and I don't have the
heart to throw them out or recycle them.  Most seem to be good for
about 5-6 years before they start having hardware failures (e.g. power
supplies, USB ports dying, etc.) but with a little bit of effort they
might be useful for something.  Maybe a NAS for storing files?  A print
server?

The downside to old computers is they tend to be power hungry, so having
a lot of old computers running tends to increase your electric bill.

I have been putting linux on old laptops and giving them to my 10 year old
neighbor for his friends to use for email and sometimes browsing and Youtube.
A 266MHz Compaq Insignia with 160MB RAM - no sound in linux.
A 300MHz Trek 2 with 256MB RAM - no sound at all.
A 500MHz Compaq Presario 3700 with sound but crummy keyboard and 384MB RAM.
A 650MHz Gateway with 256MB and a few bad keys.  xvkbd.  Good sound.
A 700MHz Toshiba where the sound failed but good keyboard and 384MB.
A 900MHz HP with good sound and keyboard but dead CD burning (it reads),
USB, and PCMCIA.  Working ethernet port.  Youtube no longer works with K7.

A 1.6 GHz DELL D600 almost joined the list - dead USB, internal wifi slot,
CD burning, and very broken hinges and flaky power jack.  
A 2GHz DELL 8500 with dead internal wifi, dead speakers but sound works,
and both DELLs have broken Speedstep so they run at less than half rated
speed.  600MHz and 1.2MHz.  In XP, Rightmark Clock Utility overrides this
and Cpu Frequency Tool works in the oldest linux (Puppy 4) but not in newer
puppies so they use Puppy 4 for browsing but it will not do youtube.  There
are a few bad keys in the 2GHz also (bad controller).

I gave the kids also:
A 2011 HP with screen removed because it was broken and there is nothing
left to attach a new one to.  


I parted with most of the computers with bad sound or bad keyboards.

I also have:

A 900MHz Toshiba in which the sound died.

A 1.5GHz HP with dead mouse controller and dead PCMCIA (and 
USB?). 

A 2GHz HP with dead keyboard but good sound. 

A 1.6GHz DELL with cracked screen and dead internal wifi slot. 

A 1.6GHz Thinkpad with dead inverter (won't work with good lamp) 
and Chinese keyboard. 

A DELL 8100 with dead eraser-head mouse, dead wifi slot (mini-PCMCIA) 
and faint sound (and the headphone output needs fixing) and 

a DELL 8200 with the same sound problem.  
The 1.5GHz 8500 runs at half the speed of the 1.0GHz 8100.


I put in hard drives of 1.3GB or a little more, and Puppy Linux (a 100-160MB
download, add browsers).  For laptops too old to have onboard ethernet 
add a wifi card from Kiwanis rummage sale.  

I also gave out a few desktops from 2002-2004 (2.5-2.8GHz) which are much 
speedier but require monitors and keyboards.  We even supplied a couple of
those.

The 8 year old is now emailing us things like 'ok' 'no'.  

I have two other laptops with crummy screens but good sound, and mechanical
adjustments (dials or buttons), 266MHz Toshiba and 475MHz Compaq, set up
as internet radios.  No graphics needed.  Mplayer and a set of about 75
scripts to play various classical stations around the world.  US ones all
have commercials so we don't listen to them much.  The Toshiba graphics
are messed up but I don't need them and it will work with 3MB RAM (we have
more).  I have a 120MHz Compaq that also makes a nice radio and some others.

Old wifi-capable cell phones make good radios too.  Windows Mobile 2003
is pretty borderline but still gets 3 classical stations (Windows Media)
and the Windows Media 6 one might play streaming MP3s but not pls or mpu.
Blackberry phones with wifi are better - Tunein app has hundreds of stations.
I even have one Tracfone feature phone with wifi.  

These will all plug into our several iPod speakers (via 3.5mm jack).

At least laptops don't use as much energy as the desktops.

Today we are trying to upgrade a 2002 DELL Inspiron 8200 from 1.5 to 2.0GHz
Pentium or maybe 2.4GHz Celeron (half the cache).  Amazingly clean inside.

The early Pentium CPUs were not so good. Mobile Pentium 4 tests out at half
the speed of a Pentium 3 (1.5 vs 1.0GHz too).  The CPU is from 2001.
The next version, Pentium M, was made from 2002-2005 and is faster but also
a lot more power hungry.  Dual core were made in 2004.

    We have a shelf full of Pentium 4 desktops at work that
are on the brink of being recycled. I snagged one for use as
my work desktop.  It has 2G RAM, a 20G PATA hard disk drive
and runs NetBSD nicely. I use an RDP client to connect to an
application server where our business software runs and I
have a few local programs (e.g. Firefox and the GIMP) too.

    I set up similar machines for a couple of cow-orkers but
instead of X window (and Blackbox) they're presented with a
full-screen RDP session when they log in.

    Experimentally I have also run Windows 10 Technical
Preview on a 3 GHz Pentium 4 desktop with 1G RAM and an 80G
SATA drive. The end result was surprisingly usable. I should
probably try it on a dual-core Atom or AMD Zacate box too.

What is RDP?

    RDP is the Remote Desktop Protocol.  It lets a graphical
terminal (or a computer that's pretending to be a graphical
terminal) connect to a computer (usually a Windows Server)
and run programs there.  This can be useful for a variety of
reasons.

I have done similar with linux.  I forget how but it was one short line of
text.  I used a 486 with 640x480 resolution to run programs on a 233MHz
pentium and display them at lower resolution but 'fast' speed.  

    If the server ran Linux it's likely that you used X11 or
VNC to connect a graphical terminal to it, though I'm told
other options are available.

X11, somehow.  

This response has been erased.

I have an old iPad first generation I've been trying to find uses for.
Secondary monitor? PDF reader in the shop or while working on my Jeep (don't
care if it gets dirty)?

    Today at the office things were slow so I was handed a
pile of laptops (mostly eight to ten years old).  I wiped
them and installed an OS and gave each a desktop icon that
points to the (Windows) application server.  Two got Windows
10 Technical Preview, most got Xubuntu and one was so old
that even Xubuntu wouldn't run (the CPU lacked PAE).  NetBSD
boots but oddly the wired Ethernet port was not detected.  I
may be able to fix that with a custom kernel.

Nice.  How much RAM and what type of CPU did the Win 10 preview run on?
People keep asking on-line what is needed to run Win 10 and it looks
like many computers will run it, even old ones with less RAM and a
decent CPU.

    I have experimentally run it on a Pentium 4 with 1G RAM.
It works but there's a noticable lag when you first boot
before the Start menu begins to work.  In practice I'd
recommend a dual-core processor and at least 2G RAM (for 32-
bit) or 4G RAM (for 64-bit).

Puppy Linux (5 or 6) runs on a 1GHz with 512MB or 768MB RAM.
I have been setting up old laptops for my young neighbor's friends.  One lucky
person got a 900MHz (bad pcmcia, usb, cd-rom, and parport).
An older version will work in less memory (boots using 10MB) and I have run
it just fine at 233Mhz.  

    I was working today on a ten year old laptop (1.6 GHz
Pentium M, 1G RAM, 40G PATA disk) when its gigabit Ethernet
port disappeared from under me. I should probably resist the
urge to fix that one.

I would love to have it.  You can easily plug in a pcmcia ethernet card.
Or spend $2-3 on ebay for a USB wifi card.  
If you give up on the computer I would also love to have the memory.
My laptops that age have 2x256MB PC133 or DDR1.

    I used the RAM to upgrade a twelve year old laptop that
is in better condition with a working wired Ethernet port.
The ten year old one has WiFi but I'm not sure how to make
that work on NetBSD and the laptop can't run Xubuntu because
it lacks PAE.

Run Lubuntu without PAE?  Or Puppy Linux 6 Tahrpup non-PAE, which calls for
an enormous 768MB RAM.   Puppy Linux comes with most wireless drivers and if
there are any missing it is easy to use the Windows NDIS drivers.

I just set up my oldest laptop with a lot of DOS games from the 80s and early
90s for a non-verbal adult to use for entertainment.  80MB RAM, 120MHz, lovely
keyboard (like a desktop used to have).  

Puppy Linux Tahr is up to about 160MB now.  Puppy 4 was 100MB.  Tahr can use
Tahr Ubuntu (14) packages.   I got it working with Ubuntu Chrome 38 and
Netflix.  

Here's something I noticed today.  LXDE is what Raspberry Pi uses by
default and so does my Beaglebone Black, both based on Debian Linux.
This appears to be more of an OS that just an X11 windows manager
or desktop, but related LXDE.  It says it's based on Ubuntu/Lubuntu
LTS. LXLE is what it is called.

It says it's good for old computers.  I don't know if that is true or
how easy it is to use for people used to Windows.

http://www.lxle.net/

Has anyone tried it?

Requirements are a bit more demanding than PUppy linux (512MB minimum RAM,
1GB better) and it is much larger (installs to 8GB).

So, I have Apple IIgs ROM3 computer.  I ordered a card for it that uses
a CF memory card (256meg).  So that will act like hard disk.  Should
be interesting.  I'm on the list to get an ethernet card for it, too.
Then I can connect to the network at home.  Both will make downloading
software to it easier (e.g. plug the CF card into your PC and there is
an program to download to software to it).  It's funny to use such an
old computer, but it will have a word processor (actually two or three
of them).  We'll see how it goes.  There is actually a small community
of developers (both hardware and software still using these computers).
eBay occasionally has cards for sale as well whole Apple II computers.
Talk about retro computing!

    That sounds like a real collector's item! At one point I
had an Apple IIe.  It was nowhere near as collectable as the
IIgs and it's probably fortunate that someone recycled it
while I wasn't looking.  I rather wish they'd kept the "high
speed" serial expansion card though.

The accelerator cards for the IIgs are out of sight expensive, if you
can even find them.  One will take it up to around 32Mhz, so while
that doesn't sound all that fast in today's CPU terms, for a 65816 CPU
that's very fast and of course, the OS runs more or less one program at
a time so the speed would be quite good.  There is one small company
developing a 32Mhz accelerator card, but they want over $700 for it and
it is beta hardware right now. I'm not sure I want the speed all that
much.  If I could find one (e.g. Transwarp GS, which goes to 7 Mhz, or
one of the others) on eBay at a reasonable price I might get it, but it
isn't a priority righ tnow.  They are kind of rare because they were so
expensive originally that not many people bought them.

Another thing to investigate is RAM cards.  You can take it to a max of
8 megs.  I need to see what kind of RAM this IIgs has.  I'm thinking it
might have about 2 meg, which isn't bad.  You can get 4 meg of RAM for
$110 (include the card the RAM modules plug into).

If you get too many cards like this plugged in, you need to install a
cooling fan.  You may even need to improve the power supply.  So, it's
easy to go overboard with stuff for these computers.

I have a Super Serial Card around here somewhere that I need to dig 
out (it is probably plugged into my //e, which is in a box in the
basement right now).

So I got my CF card reader card installed in my IIGS and it does
function as a hard drive of source in terms of the amount of space
(32meg for each volume, much morew than floppies).

I also got an SD disk emulator card which I put in my IIe, and it boots
ProDOS off that SD card just fine.  Plenty more room for other volumes.

I'm now awaiting an Uthernet ethernet card.  They are in the process
of sending it off for PC board manufacturing in China and assembly in
Canada.  With any luck I should have it by November this year.  Once the
boards arrive from the assembler, the guy who designed it and is selling
it will test boards after work hours and on the weekends, he said.

It's quite amazing the number of hobbyist PC board projects people have
going for the Apple II (and other 8 bit computers, too).  

I have an Apple High Speed SCSI card and if I could find a suitable hard
drive for it I could hook that up.  But I'm not sure it would handle
more modern SCSI drives.  It was made for drives like 30-80 Megs not 70G
or more.  Does anyone know if there is some limitation for bigger SCSI
drives when used on old hardware?

A couple of months ago I bought a new Lenovo ThinkPad E550 to run Linux on;
one of the nice things about Lenovo ThinkPads is that even though old ThinkPad
loyalists complain about such things as the chiclet keyboard, the lack of
buttons on the trackpad (now fixed for the ClickPoint "nipple", and in the
forthcoming P series apparently also for the actual trackpad buttons (3
buttons!), and the lack of separate volume keys, they still 100% on hardware
with open source drivers. One of the nasty things about the BSDs is that,
despite having open hardware, I have been unable to run any of them on the
ThinkPad; "polecat" is now merrily running Manjaro Linux, a beginner-friendly
(read: easy and quick to install) derivative of Arch Linux with some cool
themes (if you're going to run a GUI, it might as well look nice).

Today I resurrected grisons, a 5/6-year-old netbook originally running SUSE
Linux Enterprise Desktop, then OpenSUSE, and attempted to run Icarus Desktop,
a PC-compatible distribution of AmigaOS, on it. But that wouldn't boot either.
It is now happily running (the x86 version of) Manjaro XFCE Linux.

    I've heard mostly good things about ThinkPads and BSD
but I daresay it depends which model you have.

Okay, I got an Ethernet card installed in my IIgs (ROM 3) and it
connects to my LAN via DHCP just fine to get an IP address.  It is an
Uthernet II card.  I grabbed some software to do FTP and it works.  So,
that's another way I can move files to and from the IIgs.  There is a
telnet app, too, which I haven't tried yet.  Obviously, these are rather
old protocols at this point, but that's about all I can find for an
Apple IIgs.  If someone writes an SSH client, that would be cool, but
I'm not holding my breath for it at this late date.

If I don't use FTP, I need to use a serial null modem cable and some
telecom software to do X-modem, Y-modem, Z-modem, etc. transfers, which
can be somewhat slow unless I can up the connection speed (that depends
on the comm software; many are still stuck in the 1200/2400 era).  On
the PC I can run PuTTY or Teraterm or similar to make the connection.
I've used Proterm 3 on the Apple side and it works.  It's just not all
that fast.

I am impressed that you still remember how to do all this.  

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