PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.7 Things to Do with Old PCs

So what do you do with an old PC that
would cost too much to upgrade to current standards? We encounter
that question frequently around here. We have everything from the
latest multiprocessor boxes to creaking old Pentiums. Here, in no
particular order, are 10 useful things to do with an old PC:

In many households, one spouse is a PC
power user and the other is much less demanding. She works at home
doing serious number crunching and plays the latest 3D games to
relax, while he just checks his email periodically and uses the Web
to keep up with the PGA Tour results. Or vice versa. He might be
happier having an older system all to himself than he would be
sharing the latest, fastest PC. While you're at it,
install a home network, if only to share your Internet connection.
You can do so using a traditional wired Ethernet, 802.11 wireless
networking, or even Home Phone Line Alliance (HPNA) or power-line
networking. The cost can be as little as $50 for a couple of decent
Ethernet cards and a 100BaseT cable.

Younger kids want to play educational games, some of which require a
lot of PC, but many of which run just fine on a two- or
three-year-old system. Older kids need word processing, web browsing,
and email, but may also want to run games, some of which are quite
demanding. Before you pass the old system on to the kids, consider
doing one or more "$50
upgrades"$50 for a faster processor, $50 to
add RAM, $50 for a new video card, and, if necessary, $50 to replace
the CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive. Before you do much more than
that, remember that you can buy or build a pretty competent PC
nowadays for $400 or thereabouts, not including the monitor.

An old Pentium system with a 15-inch monitor and 1 GB hard drive
isn't a good upgrade candidate, but that
doesn't mean it's useless.
It's still good enough for web browsing, email, and
light word processing, and there are many elderly people who would
love to have such a machine. The stereotype that old people and
computers don't mix is just wrong. One of our
readers reports that his 103-year-old grandfather spends hours on the
Web every day, and similar stories are common. If you ask around,
what you find may surprise you. If you're going to
do it, do it right. Strip the system down and reinstall Windows,
Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Office. Carry the system
over, set it up for them, connect it to their phone line, and spend a
couple of hours getting them started using it. Help them get
connected to the Internet, and check back periodically to make sure
they're having no problems.

Many nonprofits are pathetically
underequipped with PCs. You may feel guilty about offering them what
you consider to be an old, slow, and relatively useless computer, but
utility is in the eye of the beholder. To someone running DOS
applications on a 486which many nonprofits still doyour
old Pentium may be a godsend, particularly if you're
willing to spend some time helping them set it up and perhaps even
network it to their other machines. Don't be
surprised if a nonprofit turns down your donation, though. Many of
them have strict requirements for what they're
willing to accept, probably because they've been
deluged by people trying to dump old XTs, 286s, and 386s for tax
write-offs. If local nonprofits aren't interested,
contact the National Cristina Foundation (http://www.cristina.org). They accept
anything from Pentiums up, including individual components.

If you
don't have a home network yet, now may be a good
time to set one up. For the small cost of a couple of network cards,
some cables, and perhaps an inexpensive hub, you can share
peripherals such as large hard drives, tape drives, and printers
among all the machines on the network. Better yet, you can use
inexpensive proxy server or NAT software to share one Internet
connection. Windows 98/2000/XP even has Internet Connection Sharing
built in. We've retired a couple of our old systems
to duties as servers. One has lots of disk space and a tape drive for
system backups. The other connects to our cable modem, sharing the
Internet connection with the rest of the network via a proxy server.

Home automation, until recently
the exclusive province of gear-heads, is becoming mainstream. Much
still depends on obsolescent and unreliable X-10 technology, but
other technologies are poised to make significant inroads. If
you're not familiar with home automation, visit
http://www.home-automation.org
and check some of the web sites listed there. You might be surprised
by what can be done, and an old PC can be quite useful as a central
controller for a home automation system.

If you work at home,
consider installing a real telephone system and using your old PC to
manage it. We both work at home, and until recently had a Panasonic
telephone system installed. We used an old 386sx system with a
Talking Technologies BigmOuth card (alas, no longer available) to
provide integrated automated attendant and voice mail functions. You
can do the same to project a professional, "big
company" image. As they say, "On
the Internet, no one knows you're a
dog."

You may think that a 1.44 MB floppy, 1 GB hard disk, or 4X CD-ROM
isn't worth much, and in one sense
you're right. But if you have to troubleshoot your
main system, just having a working spare of any type may save you a
trip to the computer store. And that old ISA video card may be
priceless if you need to install a Flash BIOS update because ISA
video cards display the prompts and menus used by some Flash BIOS
update programs. PCI and AGP video cards do not display the prompts,
forcing you to work blind.

If you've never tried it, you might be surprised by
how useful another PC on your desk can be, particularly if you
network your home PCs. Windows and multitasking are great, but
nothing beats having another monitor displaying a web page or other
information while you work on your main PC. Robert takes this to an
extreme, working surrounded by (currently) nine PCs which share four
monitors.

It's obvious that Linux
is now a serious contender. Most people who read this book and are
not running Linux now will be within a year, so it makes sense to get
some experience with Linux starting now. Happily, Linux
doesn't need much hardware, particularly if
you're running it as a server.
We've run it successfully on creaking 486 systems.
It's fast on a Pentium, and it flies on older
Pentium II and Celeron systems. Many people say Linux is less likely
to have problems on newer hardware, and that's true
to some extent. However, the problems that Linux has with older
hardware are usually with unusual devices. So, although Linux may not
support ancient tape drives or sound cards or network adapters,
it's likely to work just fine with most of your
older hardware. Our main Linux server at the moment is an elderly
Pentium III/750 system that we upgraded to 256 MB of RAM and a 40 GB
Seagate hard drive. It still has the original video card, sound card,
and 100BaseT network adapter. Everything works for us. It probably
will for you as well.

Do note that if you plan to run Linux as a
desktop OS, you're not giving it a fair trial if you
run it on elderly hardware. A GUI requires horsepower, whether
it's running on the Linux kernel or the Windows
kernel. If you have any thought of migrating to Linux as your primary
desktop OS (as we did during 2002), do yourself a favor and run it on
reasonable hardwareat least a 750 MHz processor and 256 MB of
RAM. As with Windows, more is always better.