What do to with older computers?

[vakkotaur]

I have some older, slower PCs. There are a couple that still have DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on them that see little use now. One has OS/2 Warp version 3. Another, not just too slow I suppose, has Windows 2000. There are a few machines that aren't really on the network yet - or perhaps I should say not on the network at the moment. A couple have been retired from firewall/NAT service. A Pentium-90, and one or two Pentium-166s are sitting around. I'm wondering what to do with them.

One machine I had planned on using as a Linux distribution testbed. Install some distribution and see if I liked it, and if I did, put that distribution on belgian, my primary computer. Alas, 166 MHz seems to be too slow for almost all distributions nowadays. Or at least the ones I'd care to run as my primary operating system. I looked at upgrading things, but it's actually less expensive to get a new machine outright.

It seems wasteful to just scrap the old machines, though they're now so old nobody else really wants them either. I think even Computer Renaissance stopped taking in first generation Pentiums as trades. What could they do with them? But rather than figure the old machines as junk, I'm willing to at least look at them as toys. There must be something they can do that isn't already being done by the other machines. Perhaps I could play around with some of the truly alternative (pretty much toy) operating systems on them.

A while back there seemed to be a few of these little oddball OSs around. Now that I'm looking for them, they seem to have gone missing. I figure I'm just not looking in the right place(s).

Any suggestions for what to run on a 90 MHz or 166 MHz Pentium?

Comments

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Give Vector Linux a shot.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

One of the 166s already has it, and it likely to keep it at least for a while. It looks good, though the lack of real package management is a bit of a disincentive to use it.

From the Vector Linux site (well, from the Google cache of it since vectorlinux.com seems to be inaccessible at the moment...):

The minimum hardware requirements to run VectorLinux 4.3 are a 166 MHz Pentium class processor with 32 MB of RAM memory, and just 850 MB of hard disc space.

To have a more comfortable experience with VectorLinux 4.3 we would recommend a 233 MHz (MMX) processor with 64 MB of memory as a minimum.

They also indicate a larger disk would allow things like actually having additional programs and such.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I run Linux on a 166 MHz Pentium. Performance is more related to the amount of RAM available than to the speed of the processor. If you can cram 256 Mb or more of RAM into it (some of these oldies can't deal with that much, mine maxes out at 96!) then it will have pretty decent performance. Booting up or starting Xwindows will take a while, but Linux manages memory well and performance is OK once you get the right things fired up.

The other factor is not to try too many graphic applications at once. Xwindows gobbles memory like it was cheap candy, both video RAM and main. The older, slower processors perform very well at non graphical operations, such as acting as a firewall or even a web server. Apache seems much more secure and less memory leaky than IIS. :)

[jmaynard.livejournal.com]

We've already got two firewall boxes (identically configured Compaq Deskpro EN/SFF PII/450s; one for production, one for testing, which allows quickly putting a testing version into production) and a web server (a DEC Alphaserver 4000 with two 21164/400 CPUs, a gigabyte of RAM, and 27 GB of RAID 5 disk).

What else is there to try? How well does Samba work on a slow box these days?

[yakko.livejournal.com]

The only issue I see with Samba is disk space. There shouldn't really be a CPU issue for an app that's mostly network and disk-intensive.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Samba works for me. But you may have different expectations than I do. A slower machine can also run a MUCK or MUSH server without much strain. Or an LJ-like forum, if you can use one. Print server? Ham radio applications?

They are not up to your expectations as an end user workstation if you are already using current equipment. There's no question about that. But the Linux OS is perfectly happy with the older and slower, and will process packets or text with more than adequate efficiency.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I found that it's very useful to keep old parts around. In my case, I was going to repurpose an old K6-233 (which was once elfie, doing all my important things like serving web pages and IRC) to be my "machine that will run all these DOS games that don't work well, or at all, under Windows XP." Everything was fine until I added in the sound card: a Reveal SC400 (Aztech SG16 rebrand). None of the MIDI would work. I'd get hideous static trash every time.

It turned out that my "slowest" hardware was TOO FAST for this sort of thing! I had to scrape the bottom of the bin to find a Cyrix P166+, which was slow enough to let the sound work.

I really should get a GUS for that machine, because the sound doesn't work in all the games (mostly old Epic Megagames games, all of which support the GUS, as Epic was in cahoots with Gravis when the GUS was being sold).

On my Apple II hardware, hardly anything ever gets thrown away. Just a IIgs case and a IIgs monitor that wasn't worth fixing.

One suggestion is to repurpose the faster machine and keep the slow one just in case somehting comes up.