Thanks for sharing, we see this happen commonly. Sooner or later, such a move will affect us all it appears. Glad you gave away your old chips.

I've got the wireless working now on Oldboy, but firefox is completely unusable. It just grinds on and on forever, choking on what it's trying to download. Either the program has grown hugely since I retired this machine upstairs (I can't actually remember when I did that but it must have been at least a couple of years ago) or websites are now more full of junk. Or both. Fortunately AntiX also provides a graphical version of Links and I have made that my preferred browser. A more serious problem is that I don't have synaptic and so far have failed to install it. I suspect something nasty in the apt sources list.

Of course I don't strictly need a graphical interface for what I plan to do with this machine but it certainly makes it easier to set things up. The AntiX control centre is a godsend; it gives you access to so many useful tools. I wasn't able to get the wifi working with wpa_supplicant alone but ceni did it for me.

This was my main machine before I got Bigboy. I ran 32-bit Crux on it. I even built an LFS system on it once. Now I wonder how I ever managed!

Thanks for sharing. What are the specs of your BigBoy ?

Web is the main issue, getting more demanding in resources. So forget intense web, video, graphical and other big resource demanding programs with older PCs. They are ok for text and sound mostly.

That's where links is so useful. It displays text and static graphics (for example png images) but no animations, video or sound, so all the ghastly animated ads are automatically filtered out. Downloading pages is fast even on an old machine.

I might not need synaptic after all; I thought I would need it to browse packages, but I've just discovered that I can use apt-cache for that. I'll have to make a list of the software I need to install for my server; plenty of time for that!

Bigboy is a lovely machine: dual-core 2800 MHz cpu, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive. I can't imagine I'll ever need a bigger computer than this.

Give installing synaptic a try, it must work, it is not a biggie.

Wow, Bigboy is not that big compared to present day PCs but I agree that this meets most needs for folks like us.

I will make a correction here, sometimes I play simple games like Tetris, mine sweeper etc., However, fast games that are big on graphics don't interest me anymore.

Staples Black Friday 2016 Ad Released with Laptop and Amazon Devices http://www.i4u.com/2016/11/117107/st...amazon-devices

The above news gives an idea, there is a good chance that folks will be throwing away older hardware this holiday season as there is a good chance they will upgrade due to good deals. So good time to look for older PCs.

As an aside, I was informed that the older tablets and other smaller devices are gifted to children, poor friends and relatives etc., They are easy to transport. No wonder we don't see them in recycling. Perhaps, with time one may see a huge collection of these when one moves or a huge project closes etc., but this will be once in 3 years chance.

My current laptop isn't much bigger, just has 4G of ram

Nice, 2G of Ram is more than enough for Linux. At this rate when folks move out in bulk or upgrade in bulk etc., I can even expect to see 2 or 3 desktops discarded in same day it appears. Will be quite a task to get them all in at the same time. If this happens, will share here.

Yea, I've ran on 2G for every laptop prior to this one. A lightweight distro like Slackware the machines are perfectly useable.

http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-...ice-sympathize

The above seems odd but be a bit careful. There could always be someone who throws an old PC or printer out the window, you don't want to be below when they do this. It is very rare but it seems to happen, specially when one is frustrated and/or in a big rush.

My experiences with older PCs have been quite intense in the recent past and energy demanding. It has been fun to share it all here. It is good to have some basic points of references and time frames for this project. In 3 to 6 months maximum, the major part of my learning with older PCs will be done. Once this is done, it is expected that my posts here will greatly decrease and be sporadic.

Stripped apart the IBM Net Vista as chances of finding PSU for it
are almost zero. Was a bit hard to take out the Mobo screws but
they came out with some efforts. It has a CD writer, floppy
drive and 20G HD. HD is stuck in metal case, one screw
that needs a thick flathead has enlarged cut so slips when
trying to unscrew it. Was adviced to tap on the screw and also
to try drilling it out but first failed and the 2nd will
damage the HD. Was told to put some tin foil in the screw head
to reduce the slot and then try to remove the screw. Will
try something along these lines and see.
Took fan out of PSU and the screws also.
Glad I decided to strip this PC, took months to decide but
finally was the right decision.

Today's finds:

1. Special additional PCI socket to plug into PC, it says PCI 164 pin on it, it is not a card on its own,
it also has a power pin connector with just 2 pins black and yellow,
says flyconn on it and a cable that plugs into a smaller 2 4pin sockets. No Part # on it.
Was told this is a PCI graphics card riser, used in some dells
when space is a problem. Good to know.

2. Also found 26 mm fan that is well lubricated and seems to be in
working condition but didn't try it.

3. Found network cable today and a VGA cable on friday.

Changes to street found light P4
1. Added 120 Gb hard drive
2. Removed CD drive and installed CD-RW instead
3. Removed the 128 Mb Ram and added a 256 Mb Stick

Have to boot later and verify if all the new additions work ok.
Have to verify if USB boot works ok on this PC.
This PC has a PSU of just 300W max. so it will shut down or work
incorrectly if more resource demanding applications are used.
There is still dust behind the front bezel on the chasis that
comes inside the PC sometimes but decided to leave this as such for now.
Perhaps in future will get the confidence to remove it.

Software changes needed on this PC:
1. Partition the HD for linux use.
2. Install Puppy Linux Personal file on this hard drive.
3. Will use this as a test PC to do experiments with OS and software for older PCs

Change to P4 server, this is my main PC:
1. Removed the DVD-R Drive and installed DVD-RW drive
It was slow to be recognized and work by the PC, had to reboot a few times.
Made me wonder if it was damaged but glad it finally started working.
Need to check its burn feature later. This is a big convenience.
2. Removed extra HD, lost a screw in this process.
Helps to keep useful extras out of the PC for quick install when needed.
3. The internal PC speaker connection to the MB is out, need to figure out
where this connection is plugged in.


The cable came off slightly in the router and my net was off for a while.
Took a few minutes but was glad to figure out the problem and fix it.
Now I am glad that I grabbed all the PCs and accessories on the street,
they are slowly and steadily being put to use.

As an aside, verified the SFF Dell C2D that I have, its PSU has a lot of dust
inside it closer to the fan. However, will leave it as such for now.
Perhaps will clean later in future if I use this PC more and a real need arises.
It is vital to clear the dust in the bezel at the front of the chasis now I realize,
as this dust can block vents in the front and thereby increase internal heat.
Will reflect on this also for the future but will be slow a I don't wish to rush
and start breaking some parts.

Well, I've solved 2 problems:
1) Couldn't install synaptic. Silly me! I forgot that a newly installed distro doesn't yet have a working software cache, so of course it can't recognise package names. apt-get update sorted that one.
2) Firefox too slow on this machine. The question was, was it Firefox's fault or is it just that web pages these days are full of animated junk? I found out when I configured the printer using cups's web interface. This is plain html text but Firefox still crawled. I lost patience and uninstalled it. I used to run Firefox 4 on this machine; it was a bit slow but usable. The current version definitely isn't with that amount of RAM. However graphical Links works very well.

Note: This is AntiX Base, which is supposed to be customised for limited resources compared with AntiX Full. So why do they include Firefox at all?

I'm gradually doing the software updates now. There's a lot of swapping going on but the old boy still has lead in his pencil!