Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > [My Review] Old systems

[My Review] Old systems

I have not bought a new computer since 2001 as people "upgrade" their Windows systems and give them to me for free. In addition to these systems, I have 6 high end CRT monitors, two of which are almost new. Needless to say, I run FreeBSD on all of them except for one Linux box.

PIII 550Mhz 192Mb Gateway systems that my company still has customers on and are used as servers.

Three P4 1.8Ghz 2Gb systems we use for software development for said customer web sites.

The wife is still using a Dimension 3000 which is 7 years old, I think. She runs WinXP on it just for bookkeeping with QuickBooks.

I find since I grew up with MS-DOS and Windows, mostly 95/98/ME/XP and I was a bit to young to fully remember the good old DOS days, that any Windows from 95 to 7 is rather boring.
I try different operating systems for a whole new learning experience.

Edit: I just tried FreeBSD and did not realize it had no desktop GUI on the CD release. So it just left me at an command prompt and yes I had no clue what I was doing. lol

reply to robman50
As a gamer, those systems are nothing more than paperweights unfortunately.

I'll keep my last rig in the closet for a couple years for parts, just in case, but I have yet to find any kind of real use for them.

reply to robman50
If you are new to Linux, get a distro such as Ubuntu, Mint, or SuSE. I use the latter. I have a LOT to learn still, I haven't gotten into the codification of the OS too much. Unless you want to do a lot of reading and research, one of those 3 might be a good choice.

As far as re-purposing an old system, that is great!
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I could toss in an DVD drive in to the Athlon 1000 system to allow me to install systems that come in DVD format.
For memory, would it be better to have more RAM and slower speeds (example 512mb pc66 or pc 100) or less RAM and higher speeds (128mb, 256mb pc 133).
Not sure if this is the place to ask this question but if I have pc 100 RAM, how fast can I run it at? Can I run it at 133Mhz?

As for systems; should I try to run a server system? Maybe I can try running an PXE service to test out booting over a network? Or maybe even an media server?

Not sure if I really need an server/client network for the stuff I do but I'm sure its worth the learning experience.
What would be a good server O/S for an system that old? Windows NT4 or 2000?

Well I guess before I do anything I should first test the spare RAM sticks I have.

reply to robman50

reply to Dissembled
I bought parts in '03 to build a machine. It has since been upgraded 1 piece at a time, and the only thing left from the original build is a 160GB sata 1.5 drive. All of these parts used to end up in my home server, but are now handed down. I have a rotation.
I refurbished the server a year or so back, it has 5TB and stores my DVD and BD collection, runs media tomb, and runs folding at home, it only uses 109W at 100% CPU utilization. Right now it has a Athon II X3 45W CPU, but I am looking at the E-350...I just don't think it can do gigabit or transcode in realtime.
You might consider something like that, most televisions, BD players, PS3's, and possibly even the xbox 360 can play back media via a upnp server. I know my phone can. And if your gaming machine is anything like mine ripping a DVD is trivial, and Blu ray is just setting it and going to make coffee.
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reply to robman50
The oldest computer I have in use anywhere is a 386 that runs a voicemail system. I've thought about upgrading it but the 4-port phone card is ISA. When the time comes, I think we'll make a quantum leap to modern technology.

At home, the oldest I have is a Dell 755 with a Q6600. I come by computers often enough that, to avoid clutter, I skip anything that isn't at least DDR2-based and has a Pentium D or better CPU.

I ran my website for a while from home using FreeBSD on a PIII with 384MB. It was fun but that was years ago. Easier now just to pay for hosting.
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reply to robman50

reply to robman50
Friggin' "new age" BS.

IBM PS/2 Model 80-111 - Win 3.11
IBM PS/2 Model 95 (too stiff to try to read the label) - Warp 4
Dell something or the other, Pentium Pro - WinNT / Warp 4 dual boot.

These are not in my "24/7" group of machines but they have work-related files on them that I occasionally need to access.

reply to pog
Maybe you can upgrade that 386 to a 486? I think the Pentium motherboards still have ISA slots. Or maybe it was the Pentium 2's that where the last to support the ISA bus.

reply to pog
I am running 384MB, 2 sticks of PC100 and 1 stick of PC133. The BIOS is set at a RAM speed of 100Mhz so I don't fry the PC100 sticks by running them at 133Mhz.

reply to robman50
I bought it to run OS/2 but, by the time OS/2 got to be pretty polished (Warp 3/4), it was too much for for it, even with an after-market CPU/FPU. It runs Windows for Workgroups on PC DOS 7.0

reply to robman50

Looks to me that's a mobe for embedded systems/industrial controls, not for regular PC use.

BTW, what is slave only ISA? "1 x ISA (slave only)"
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