Previous Generation Hardware: Does Less $ = Less Fun?

Hey guys,

I'd like to talk about obsolete hardware.

There's a craze of staying with the cutting (or bleeding) edge in hardware, and I have to say that I am guilty of that as well. That new thing always looks so great and wouldnt life be better if I had that? Well, that's not always the case. You pay a premium for the latest and newest, of course you are the first to experience bugs and shortcomings.

A little while ago, I decided that I would try to get my hands on some previous generation hardware and see what could be done with it. Just because something is a bit older, it's usually a whole lot cheaper, so why not see what can be done with some cut-rate or free hardware?

I was fortunate enough to have a Acer TravelMate C100 donated to me today, and I'm having a pretty good time playing with it so far.

P3-800mhz, 256mb Ram, 30gb Hdd, 10.4" LCD (1024x768 ), built in wifi, and an external USB cdrom drive. This thing weighs 3 lbs. Yes, more than an EEEPc, but still.. it's a 10.4" tablet! Battery life is pretty decent if you turn on the power save features (short timeout on screen/hdd/power off) and it wakes up fast so no worries about that.

Before you say "Upgrade the ram!"... I cant. 256mb is max. I installed Itunes to see if I could use this as a touchscreen control box for my jukebox setup (oops, spoiler!) but the gpu isnt powerful enough to run the album cover view. ;)

I'm currently stripping out the unneeded sofware and junk from the hdd, and updating the software. Wifi is pretty good (Orinco card.. niiiiiiice) and the onboard sound isnt exactly breathtaking, but it's not horrible either. I'll call it "adequate".

The touchscreen is pretty responsive, and works well enough for handwriting notes. I'll be testing this device as a remote to control an XBMC installation through the web browser over wifi. If it works as intended, I will be very pleased. The next step after that will be removing the keyboard and touchpad (to lighten it a bit) and removing the hdd to replace with a CF adaptor, so I can run a CF card instead. 2gb should be plenty for what I need it to do. :) Yay for Nlite. :)

Does anyone else here have an interest in "obsolete" equipment, and trying to make more with less?

I have an old SOYO m/b with a P3 500MHz that was going into my project, but got a nicer setup for a steal, so its sittin around for the next project :D

My current project (building a Smoothwall box) is a Pentium Pro, 64 megs of EDO, in a beat-ass 4U rackmount (that will remain only slightly modded - mesh and paint).

Old hardware can be just as fun, depending on what you use it for.

I have my fair share of pentium/pro and older systems (386, apple II, atari xe and the slightly older similar model) if you're just talking about computers. As FP said, it depends on what you use it for. If it's for a small personal file server, it doesn't matter too much. You need an older computer to run windows 95 (even VMware won't run it if your CPU is too fast), and I think all of the socket 775 and newer motherboards have killed win9x support, so if you want to run the older stuff, you pretty much need a computer with older technology. Less power consumption and heat too.

I've got a P3 laying around that I need to get working. I'm thinking about setting it up so the wife and I can access our school from the other half of our house. I think it just depends on what you are looking to do with it. When I build my next comp I'll only get a quad core if I find a killer deal, otherwise I'll get a decently fast CPU that's not cutting edge for cheaper.

I'm finding more and more great deals on stuff lately.. people just seem to be giving things away that are perfectly useful!

I might have gotten a P4 3.0 HT system today (socket 478) for free today.. just waiting on an answer.

I got one with a case, heatsink, and motherboard out of the trash last month.

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Originally Posted by nevermind1534

I got one with a case, heatsink, and motherboard out of the trash last month.

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Excellent! Those are the best kind. :)

I might have really lucked out on this one.. 500gb hdd and an 80gb hdd, 2gb ram, ATI X1300, WinXP Pro, etc. :D

Oh, the one I got is a socket 775.

I like old hardware. I would love to play around with a comodore 64 for a while :]
One reason I'm interested in older hardware is because for 10 years, I've used a 98 HP and until I get my new build finished, it will be the computer I've used most of my life and I have always had to deal with crashes, freezes and everything else included in Windows ( :P ). Until this week, I haven't had enough money but I wanted to buy myself a commodore 64 just for fun and I think I just might today :)

I have an old HP ZV5000 with a 2.8 GHz Celeron and Radeon 9000 graphics when they first came out. It runs Intrepid Ibex with a few hangups graphics-wise, but i just use it as a file server and Folding@Home so that really isn't a problem.

I'll be building myself a WoW box out of these two P4's that I've aquired. :) That's one of todays projects.. right after:

take out garbage
salvage hardware from 5 old computers in backyard (probably nothing, but I"ll have to trash the drives)
recycle computers and CRT's
Recycle all recycling junk (bottles, papers, etc)
etc etc