any use for old computers? for some reason i got 3 pc towers from the windows xp era (all of them are amd athlon xp, 1-2gb of ram each). they run win xp perfectly. i use one with soulseek,but is there any point in keeping the others? or just pass em or trash em?

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Anonymous Sat Sep 15 16:37:43 2018 No.1464714 [Reply] [Original]

any use for old computers?

for some reason i got 3 pc towers from the windows xp era (all of them are amd athlon xp, 1-2gb of ram each). they run win xp perfectly.

i use one with soulseek,but is there any point in keeping the others? or just pass em or trash em?

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 17:22:32 2018 No.1464736 nothing that connects them to the internet since they are insecure as hell.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 17:25:34 2018 No.1464738 >>1464714 Media player, throw some hard drives in and it can be your own NAS...

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 17:34:48 2018 No.1464745 i don't know much about this, however my friend uses old rigs as servers

Anonymous Sat Sep 15 18:24:36 2018 No.1464772

>>1464714
Install arch or similar and run piehole. Bonus points if you can reduce the power consumption.
Nas (freenas is noice)
Firewall
Personal webserver for dev or music (i like masonic so I may access my music. Subsonic is my phone app client. Fuck plex.)
Media streamer server or jukebox
Media receiver/player
Mame arcade game emulator
Personal svn
Siri server
Webcam recording server (diy security)
Home automation
Small CNC Machines and or any combination of the above. Again power consumption will mean something here. Your choice of os is significant too. This can also be your opportunity to learn an os as well. You can run it headless and ssh or RDP in once you're setup to the network for most of the aforementioned applications. You can do quite a bit.

Or ask /g but they'll just say install Gentoo.

Anonymous Sat Sep 15 19:01:31 2018 No.1464801

>>1464714
Donate them to your local university Chem dept. plenty of old instruments running there that run on software that won't run on newer computers. I've been keeping perfectly working old instruments out of the trash by repairing and replacing old comps. Wouldn't be surprised if I've kept the dept from spending millions of dollars. Other places with older expensive instrumentation/machines would probably like them too.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 19:29:02 2018 No.1464817 >>1464772 Replace your existing router with ESXi+pfSense VM and teach yourself to administer it. Useful resume skill and unstoppable router

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 19:36:00 2018 No.1464822 >>1464714 I run a ~800mhz P3 as a pfsense router and it's plenty for my 30mbit connection. It's still rock solid running 24/7.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 20:29:13 2018 No.1464862 >>1464817 Yes this is another worthy endeavour. You need the nics however.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 22:14:19 2018 No.1464908 >>1464772 could use it for machine learning storage

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 15 22:18:14 2018 No.1464913 >>1464862 A gigabit PCI NIC is easy to come by

Anonymous Sat Sep 15 22:49:17 2018 No.1464937

>>1464714
I regret throwing mine away.

Cool shit old PCs have:
- Serial port and Com port that can be used as GPIO
- Full PCI-Express expansion cards for old peripherals like cheap tape storage
-You have a native VGA monitor port which combined with a CRT monitor gives you lowest display latency possible.
-They can run old Unreal engine games like Wheel of Time without fucking DRM shit. You can still play UT99 today with plenty of people online to compete with.
- You can use older software that wasn't raped with DRM and SAS shit

>>	Hansol !WXeJR7upbo Sun Sep 16 01:51:49 2018 No.1464996 mail it to me i need a spare mobo to test my shit think my mobos toastered but i want to be sure before i spend the money on a new motherboard tried everything else including testing the psu so im out of ideas

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 02:56:48 2018 No.1465011 >>1464738 play 640*480 videos fluently. Have a NAS that consumes 250W idle. Bad ideas anon. Throw them away

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 04:44:55 2018 No.1465033 >>1464937 What about dosbox and SCUMMVM ?

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 08:44:55 2018 No.1465097 -make a gaming cabinet -install and learn Linux -turn into LAN party machines ??? profit

Anonymous Sun Sep 16 11:13:31 2018 No.1465170

>>1464714
If you're a poorfag or just cheap, you can scrap it. There's gold, silver, platinum, palladium, etc. on most of ports. May only be a few dollars worth, but that shit adds up. If you have the space, it could be worth it. Over the years, a friend has made several hundred dollars from just picking up old desktops and laptops thrown out or around dumpsters. Google scrapping pc's and look up 'gold fingers' on ebay.

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 13:51:16 2018 No.1465246 >>1464745 A single modern computer (made within 5 years) will outperform dozens of these shit boxes and cost less as well. Even deploying stuff in virtual machines would yield better performance than running 3-5 of these shit box.

Anonymous Sun Sep 16 17:38:53 2018 No.1465398
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>>1465170
>Over the years, a friend has made several hundred dollars from just picking up old desktops and laptops thrown out or around dumpsters.

>years
>several HUNDRED dollars

yeah not worth the effort for this shit unless you have a warehouse full of shit to scrap and alot of free time. on a normal person scale this is not worth the effort not even to make a few hundred over several years
its not cost effective

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 18:02:29 2018 No.1465413 >>1464714 >i use one with soulseek what fucking year is this anon?

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 18:26:20 2018 No.1465425 >>1465413 soulseek is still the best place to get rare music for DJing, remixes and 12" singles and shit also, I have a 10" HP touchpad with Android on it, anything good for that?

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 18:48:01 2018 No.1465442 >>1464736 Throw linux or bsd on them although it's likely that a rk3399 sbc is better these days

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 23:22:02 2018 No.1465650 >>1465425 Why don't you get android studio and find out little neet?

>>	Anonymous Sun Sep 16 23:52:35 2018 No.1465660 >>1464714 24/7 Server for your new google killing search engine.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 17 00:06:53 2018 No.1465672 >>1464714 run old games and programs on them works much better than a vm desu

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 17 12:09:35 2018 No.1465905 >>1464714 Sell the parts on eBay. Socket A motherboard = $20 Athlon XP = up to $20 depending on the speed 2GB DDR RAM = $10 Hard drives = target practice

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 17 13:18:31 2018 No.1465930 >>1465905 motherboard with 4 PCI slots have industrial applications. new motherboards don't have more than 1 you can get $50 easy

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 17 13:24:03 2018 No.1465935 File: 257 KB, 757x413, MXGF_C2-30-X_-_ATX_Motherboard_with_3.0GHz_Core_2_Duo_CPU,_4_PCI_and_2_PCIe_Slots,_VGA,_SATA,_RAID,_USB,_LAN,_and_Audio_-_CyberResearch_-_2018.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1465930

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 18 17:45:44 2018 No.1466714 >>1465930 Socket 775 with lots of PCI are worth something, older shit much less.

Anonymous Tue Sep 18 18:17:05 2018 No.1466728
File: 42 KB, 500x375, 500x500.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>1466714
Over 10 million industrial and commercial machines built in the 90s and 2000s utilized PCI / PCIX architecture.
These machines do the same job they have always done. Manufacturers want to sell new machines, so as you know, many of these machines are out of support, and replacement parts are often not available from the manufacturer.
So what's a business owner to do? Buy a new machine for $100,000 or find someone to service your old machine?
Some machines can be upgraded, sure, but It's not an option for many, or at least not economically feasible.

Anonymous Tue Sep 18 18:28:53 2018 No.1466738
File: 20 KB, 493x206, PCIUT3100T.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>1466728
If the motherboard in the machine goes bad, but the rest of the machine is working, you need to replace the motherboard with one that can do the job. If it needs 3-4 PCI slots...

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 18 18:33:33 2018 No.1466741 File: 53 KB, 418x271, 7058-2451255.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1466738 >If it needs 3-4 PCI slots... or more

>>	Anonymous Tue Sep 18 18:37:34 2018 No.1466745 >>1464714 Stick some kind of linux on one and use it as your only computer, it does everything a regular adult needs. dont be some kind of nerd.

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 11:39:15 2018 No.1467062 >>1466741 cant you build/buy a PCI extender that gets you like 5 sockets out of one? PCI is a parallel bus, unlike PCIe

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 12:10:34 2018 No.1467070
File: 24 KB, 366x357, MISC_Netra_E1_PCI_CardCage.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>1467062
you could re-engineer the whole machine, if you wanted to. It's just faster and easier to replace bad parts. If the machine is down, it's not making money.

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 16:27:57 2018 No.1467211

>>1466728
Yeah that's why you can buy new compatible stuff, just expensive AF, you think a serious business would pick up old junk of CL? I was asked to build a system for a older musician, he is never gonna upgrade or change his workflow so wed looked into some backup hardware, but I ended up declining the work as messing with XP drivers makes me puke.

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 16:36:35 2018 No.1467215

>>1467211
>you think a serious business would pick up old junk of CL
my company scouts the online auction houses for spares we used to have in our 15-30 year old machines
sometimes two broken parts get merged into a functioning one
all in order to keep old gear running.
>what company would repair their machines with junk
the biggest have 10-45 billion turnover....
>b-but why
$$$$$$$

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 17:10:27 2018 No.1467237 >>1467070 Is that a crossbow?

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 18:01:02 2018 No.1467270

>>1467215
1000x this.
The option of upgrading the os can lead to a platform upgrade of the controls. I just redid a single pc hmi with Ge and it cost me over 80k. If we did the plc it would of been a million. The machine itself performs 250k of revenue a day.
I have, over countless jobs, used vms, win 7 XP compatibility and every other trick to avoid replacing the machine with something that doesn't have a UART, uses uefi and only runs 10 or requires an internet connection to allow the software to run. Linux was NEVER an option. Win 10 may become compatible with the software but by then they'll have windows 25 and 10 will be legacy support.
The oldest equipment makes the most money in industry, more than cloud servers do with their shiny web sites.

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 18:11:59 2018 No.1467279 Yes but 10-15 year old consumer shit FFS how is that not more trouble then its worth?

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 18:26:54 2018 No.1467293 >>1467279 https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/us/for-parts-nasa-boldly-goes-on-ebay.html

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 18:34:58 2018 No.1467298

>>1464714
Dust it up, and install windows 7 on it and sell it for ~$40 each. You'll find buyers, probably.

Then when you get ~$100(due to haggle), you can do something useful with the $100 instead of the shitty computers with no actual use to you.

Then the question is "Any use for $100?"

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 18:50:16 2018 No.1467311
File: 1.06 MB, 2848x2132, 093.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

your city might have hundreds of these boxes
they control the sewers. turn pumps on when they fill up, secondary pumps when they overfill. an alarm if something goes wrong.
some of them have old motorola radios in them that alert the water plant that there's a problem.

These were designed in the 1970s and still work today.
This is the point where morons say "an arduino could do that"
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
if it breaks, you get sewage backing up
you do what you gotta do to keep them working.

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:04:29 2018 No.1467322

>>1467311
The problem with "if it aint broke dnot fix it" is if the potential of changing to arduino could save the city millions of dollars. First the power requirement to run the ancient '70s tech vs modern <3w tech. Second is the cost of repair, parts, etc. You can buy hundreds of arduino product complete for this job and repair by replacing the entire unit and its cost would be cheaper than the traditional time spent repairing the old techs.

Time = money
Electricity = money

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:08:33 2018 No.1467328 File: 38 KB, 386x386, 285_inside.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1467322

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:17:20 2018 No.1467331 >>1467311 >dad why are we driving a 1985 ford escort? >it aint broke >but dad it has nearly no safety features, less horsepower than a Prius, and looks like a rectangular turd >IT AINT BROKE SO WE AINT FIX IT

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:20:44 2018 No.1467336

>>1467322
Nope. LED street lights are a great example of this. My city just spent millions replacing all the old metal halide and sodium street lights with LED's. Now they're constantly failing and going into party mode. So now they gotta pay a bunch of lineman dicks $60 an hour each to to up and replace the things because one $0.01 capacitor shit the bed. Do they fix the cap? Fuck no. They buy a new $1000 lamp and throw the old one in the fuck it bucket. Meanwhile the old gas discharge lights run forever without maintenance.

It's almost always cheaper to keep old shit running. Pumpjacks are another good example.

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:24:01 2018 No.1467339

>>1467293
>https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/us/for-parts-nasa-boldly-goes-on-ebay.html

"NASA's growing reliance on antiquated parts is in some ways a measure of how far its star has fallen."

And really keeping the shuttles flying, was that really worth it?

Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:28:28 2018 No.1467341
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>>1467331
>dad why do you drive that 1968 Camaro
it ain't broke
>but dad it has nearly no safety features
>my Prius has only caught on fire 3 times.
it's a pussy magnet son, you wouldn't understand. go play with your arduino toys
>looks like a rectangular turd
stop putting square pegs up your ass

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:34:22 2018 No.1467344 >>1464714 The power supplies would be useful to someone building a small 3D printer or cnc

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:37:44 2018 No.1467346 >>1467336 Buyin shitty chinese LED will do that instead of industry tested LED. >>1467328 That's a modern PCB with modern manufacturing capabilities/reliability/energy consumption reduction.

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 19:38:44 2018 No.1467347 File: 40 KB, 429x321, 1968-Chevrolet-Camaro-muscle-and-pony-cars--Car-100755187-40b2297900fd30a1364f01d1548945b5.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>1467341

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 20:15:31 2018 No.1467380 >>1467341 irony at its finest >300 or 400 hp >roughly 11 mpg 2018 >450-650hp >over 20 mpg

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 20:39:04 2018 No.1467407 >>1467380 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-Y2Hvnfrg

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 20:51:11 2018 No.1467414 >>1467407 >heavily modified turd outruns stock new car >6mpg vs 13 on the same track

>>	Anonymous Wed Sep 19 20:51:47 2018 No.1467416 >>1467380 >irony at its finest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 10:18:50 2018 No.1467709 >>1466745 This and no made in israel intel inside spy hardware.

Anonymous Thu Sep 20 10:27:42 2018 No.1467715

>>1467331
I have an old car with barely any tech built into it. Guess what? It runs better than a new car because i can fix it myself instead of paying a mechanic 100 an hour and get ripped off on parts on top of that. Old stuff is great if you know what you're doing. Plus there's a cool factor of driving some old car that looks like it just came off the showroom floor.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 10:30:50 2018 No.1467718 >>1467341 >pussy magnet Chicks love a guy who can work with his hands and keep things going

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 10:34:02 2018 No.1467719 >>1467347 1967 noice!

Anonymous Thu Sep 20 10:58:06 2018 No.1467729

>>1464714
I have two hdd with my old crap tractor pc tower. One has Linux CNC on it the other Windows XP.

It's useful to have something with parallel ports, serial ports and IDE hdd connectors.

I got an Xbox with a dead hdd recently, so read the EEPROM from the motherboard using the pc tower's serial port, then cloned another xbox hdd and locked it using pc towers IDE connector.

The parallel port is also useful, there are plenty of situations were you either need a) access to a parallel port or b) to buy some expensive programmer.

>tl:dr the old hardware comes in handy repairing shit.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 11:06:39 2018 No.1467732 you might want to get new PSUs for them because the ones they have now are going to be hilariously inefficient compared to modern ones

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 12:27:26 2018 No.1467765 >>1464801 So YOU are the one I swear every IR spectrometer uses a shit XP system

Anonymous Thu Sep 20 13:21:25 2018 No.1467778

>>1467293
In 1995 I got word that NASA was looking to purchase old components for the shuttles that were no longer made. I was making chips at the time, and usually we stopped making old chips because better designs replaced the old ones. NASA had appointed a woman as the contact for purchasing, and I spoke with her on the phone. She sent me the list of components they needed that they could no longer source.
As I suspected a lot of them were simply part number changes, where a better design got a new number superseding the old part number that they were looking for, and the replacement was functionally equivalent, or superior.
An $80k sale to NASA was nothing to sneeze at, and the nice lady pulled some strings to get me set up as an approved vendor, which in effect made me a "Defense Contractor"

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 21:33:54 2018 No.1468019 https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 20 21:45:07 2018 No.1468025 >>1464714 >When you realize most of the worlds banks are using ancient software and operating systems

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 02:41:12 2018 No.1468767 >>1464817 No relevant version of ESXi will run on XP-era hardware.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 02:52:25 2018 No.1468768 >>1468025 Just because I debugged and added features to fax software...

Anonymous Sat Sep 22 08:59:37 2018 No.1468841

My hackerspace has a stack of old optiplexes, vista or XP era, and for some reason people don't realise they're just space-wasting pieces of shit.
We've got fucking raspberry pi's that take up 1/100th the space, draw 1% the power, and are just as powerful. I don't usually recommend Pi's for general purpose computing, but in this case they'd be preferable to the optiplexes.
>"We could totally install linux on these, throw in some bigger hard disks, maybe an SSD"
Yeah, well until you actually fucking do any of those things they're taking up the limited space we have. Fucking toss them!

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 10:10:04 2018 No.1468857 >>1465011 Check out this guy.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 10:10:09 2018 No.1468858 >>1468767 Native pfsense would though!

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 11:45:12 2018 No.1468902 >>1468841 Instead of crying and moaning about the cost of electricity, and how expensive it is to use a computer, why don't you focus on solar power. And if your hackerspace is small, why don't you ask mommy to buy a new building

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 12:19:37 2018 No.1468913 >>1468841 Pretty much. But they are free and have a butt load of GPIO, and a Raspberry Pi is still like £30 plus accessories. >hack or fuck around with them >wind up nuking them >nothing of value was lost.avi

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 22 21:25:53 2018 No.1469126 >>1467336 The funniest part is that while in case of home lights LED have way better lumens/watt, street lamps used tech that had very respectable efficiency, so there is no reason to replace them.

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