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dave
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What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Thread Started on Oct 3, 2009, 10:57pm »
This is intended to be a continuation to "Oldest working computers you've got". Seeing as these boards have laid dorment for a while, I thought I might as well have a shot at semi reviving them for a little while.

I use my Athlon XP 2000+ as my main system (Wether you consider it old or not is up to you. It's old to me, but it does its job :P)

My celeron 1100A @ 1463MHz is my webserver, and semi workstation thing

I use my PowerMate 286 if I feel like waiting ages to do something I can do in a fraction of the time on my other computers

My PIII-650 gets used for whatever I feel like doing with it :)

If I gety bored with any of the above, i'll drag out oner i've left alone for a while. (I recently dragged out my old PII-350 with Windows 2000. According to the Event manbager, the last error was 8 months ago, probably the last time I used it!)

Now it's up to you to continue on. I've got 2 weeks of school holidays to burn 8-)
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #1 on Oct 3, 2009, 11:22pm »
my primary use P3 @ 1400MHz is for MD dev and all other things I do
my P166MMX gathers dust and usually gets turned on to play some fun games that run bad on my P3
my 486 and 386 are usually gathering dust too, but I test my stuff on them occasionally.
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #2 on Oct 4, 2009, 10:36am »
Most of my old PCs are in the closet. The oldest PC I'm still using (regularly) is my old laptop - I use it with my TotoTek flash cart programmer to flash my MD-Pro 64. My current dev system doesn't have a parallel port, so I set up the laptop to take care of it instead. The laptop is an ECS G320 Via EPIA based system (1 GHz C3 processor).
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #3 on Oct 4, 2009, 8:40pm »
My 386 (codename "Marika"): Torture-testing of misc applications, under Win95 (mostly). Last time, it was Internet browsing under DOS :) It does run Office 97 just fine (and on a 'SX with 6 megs, while M$ demands you a 'DX with 8 megs)

My P225-MMX (codename "Saki"): TV audio ripping, router (wired Ethernet or tethered USB 3G cellphone), PDF printer, data recovery services, HD/CD/DVD drive testing, backup box (how many 'MMX boxes there have 250 gig drives FULLY WORKING PAST THE 32/128GB barriers? :D), and the ocassional torture testing.

My P133 (codename "Asumi"): Linux testing, HD/CD/DVD drive testing, alternate OS research... and you guessed it, MORE tortute testing! :D :D

And my two laptops: a ancient-as-in-stone P4M @ 2.8GHz, that i use for downloading stuff, torrents, and email; and my next-to-be-retro C2D-T5500 @ 1.6GHz, doing duty as a video encoding box for the local anime scene ;D (now with experimental H.264 encodes under Linux+Wine... evil!)
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #4 on Oct 8, 2009, 1:39am »
I also forgot - I have a P233MMX @ 266MHz with 256MB of RAM, running Windows XP home SP3! It ran firefox 3.0.x at a nice speed. 3.5 is a bit slower :( . I might write something about it on my website later.

I went to the recyclers again yesterday :P. I got an Intel E186194 Motherbaord (two "slot 2" slots, apparently 2GB of RAM max.?) I got 2 Xeons with no heatsinks on them :(, an Aopen AP5T and a HP d530 motherboard (socket 478, 4DDR slots, dual channel. Nice find it was. It's also got on board VGA AND an AGP slot)

Onto the processors, I found the one, the only, the greatest... the Celeron 1000A!!
I also found a p4 17 (100x17), a p4 2.4A (133*18, 512K cache). There was also a celeron 2400, but it's a bit "second hand" at the moment...
[image]
[image]

As you can see, it's a wee bit stuffed. Iy was frisbeed and thrown at the ground a few times, and then the removal of he "heat spreader". It is now in my garbage bin. :P

More pictures here: http://pointless-site.webhop.net/pictures/score_from_the_recyclers-6-10-2009/
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #5 on Oct 8, 2009, 8:12am »
Celeron... from CHINA!? HELL NO :P

I didn't even know that Intel had fabs on China... Fortunately for me, they also have one in Costa Rica (not too far away from Venezuela).

heh... second-hand garbage. This reminds me that i need to go to the lab to figure out what the heck happened with my 386 motherboard :)

And, hey, nice stash! Those dual Xeons are screaming hard "Dual CPU Linux box NOW!"... And what's up with that odd cable with BNC connectors? And i see an HP motherboard... guess that a garbage can is the perfect case for that one :P
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #6 on Oct 8, 2009, 2:51pm »
I've got a Celeron 2.6, and it was no faster than a P4 1.7, if not, slower!! (I kid you not). Intel also has an Israel factory as well (I think. That's where the P6 was born!)

It's not just any second hand garbage, the best second hand garbage in town! :P . I hope your 386 is fixed when you find it!

I was thinking of dual booting Windows XP and Linux on the server board, and maybe test Windows 7. I wanted to see if it was any good at running games, but before it works, I need a power supply with that 3.3V connector on it. 2GB of RAM and 2 PIII-700's should be quite nice :P. As for that HP motherboard, it's decent. I've recently repaired a D530. The power supply was rooted, so I put the whole computer in a new case and it's running with a STANDARD (I'm talking to you HP-Compaq!) micro ATX Power supply (HP wanted $150 for a new power supply, so I told the owner I could get a case and a power supply from the recyclers, and they said it was okay). I made about $50 out of that :P. I only wanted the BNC connections off of that funky cable, that's why I picked it up.

My Thermal paste just got here. Time to put some on the few of my computers that don't have any :P
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #7 on Oct 11, 2009, 8:01am »
primary: made 2003, XP, P4 at 2ghz, 256mb ram. internet doesn't work.
internet computer: Acer vista laptop, very slow.
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #8 on Oct 15, 2009, 5:30pm »
Oldest machine: Amstrad PPC512 running DOS 5 from floppy. Gonna load win 3.0 on an external zip-100 at some point. Use it as a text-only console via a parallel port ethernet adaptor. Haven't run it in a while.

Oldest in constant use: Thinkpad 390X, running windows fundamentals for legacy PCs. Using as an experiment, runs surprisingly well. P2 @ 400 with 256MB RAM.

Toshiba Portege laptop, P3 @ 933 with 512MB RAM. Running ubuntu 8.10 desktop edition on a nearly dead 20 GB hard disk. My wife uses this machine quite a bit, as she's pregnant (5 days from her due date, to be exact) and not up to sitting at her desk for long periods.

Dell Dimension 4100, P3 @ 1GHz (upgraded) with 384 MB RAM. Running ubuntu 8.10 desktop. Wife's tower. 20GB ATA-100 hard drive and 10 GB ata 33 for secondary storage.

HP Pavilion ZE2000, Sempron 1.8GHZ with 768 MB RAM. Dual booting ubuntu 8.10 & XP home (for work) on a 40 GB drive. Rather beat-up, but still working. Had to replace the miniPCI wireless card, and the battery is shot. Got it from the "destroy" cabinet at work for $0 (nice round number, that...).

Tyan Tiger 100, dual P3 @ 600MHZ with 892 MB RAM. Running XP Media Center Edition 2005. 40 GB & 80 GB ATA-133 hard drives. CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 2 x 3.5 inch floppy drives. Ugliest and loudest half-assed media center, but it works. 6 foot extension cables feed to Cirque "wave keyboard" with integrated touchpad, uses 40 inch projection TV as monitor.

Also, old zeos portable 486SL-25. And they say that the netbook is a new thing - it's the same length/width as an Acer aspire 1 (thicker, though)... Not currently running, needs trackball re-wired and floppy drive (external) fixed/cleaned.

Main PC: Acer Aspire L350. C2D @ 2 GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM. Vista home premium, 320GB SATA HDD. Slot-loading DVD-RAM. Got it from a rental place off lease for $45 :)


Sorry I haven't been around in quite a while, been very busy here. As I mentioned, my wife is carrying our child, and I've been working as many hours as I can get so that we can have things ready... I closed down my computer repair operation here, went to work as a technician for Staples, more regular pay that way. Anyhow, I'll try to drop in a little more often to annoy all of you as time allows ;)

-Bill

edit-need more coffee, can't type tonight...
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Re: What do you use your "retro" computers for?
« Reply #9 on Nov 24, 2009, 8:02am »
My main computer is a Pentium Dual-Core with 2GB of ram, which I use for everything.

Occasionally, though, I use...

-Amiga 600 with 2MB of RAM - Games and music tracking
-Celeron 2 GHz with 128 MB of RAM - Gaming and Internet-browsing with TV-Out (quite noisy)

-Future 486 (still to be built, lacks a working processor) - Gaming, Adlib music tracking

I guess you can summarize my life down to school, games, internet and music ::)
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