Hey all,

At work we are throwing away some old PC's. I can have as many as I want, but I would probably not take more than 3-4.

In your opinion.....should I take any of these PC's? They are old. I know I could use them for something, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I don't want to continually just pile old PC's up in my house just because they are PC's and I can

I think you know what I mean.


All total there are probably:

7 - 166MHz Compaq deskpros.
10 - 233MHz Pentium Compaq Small Form Factor with No CD-ROM.
5 - 333MHz Pentium II Compaq Small Form Factor with No CD-ROM.
5 - 333MHz Pentium II Regular Compaq Deskpro towers.
2 - 400MHz Pentium II Regular Compaq Deskpro towers.
3 - 450MHz Pentium II Compaq Small Form Factor with No CD-ROM.

I may take a 400MHz box because I have one here just like it. Good boxes for misc stuff and file sharing. I don't know about the others though

Right now I have a 700MHz Gateway Tower, a 400MHz Compaq (sitting in the closet), and a Dell D600 Laptop (for work....not owned by me).

If it were me, I would take the faster ones, and a few of the slower ones, tearem down and build a couple fast towers with lotsa HDD space and then Junk or donate the leftovers :}
I had that opportunity once and now have a nice network (Windows based right now ) I am slowly learning Linux so I can get some REAL use out of them.

Good luck

I worked for a contract agency that was moving their offices and me and another guy went through all their PC's. They were getting rid of the PII's and a few others and told us we could have what we wanted. I took about 12 computers in all - that being the geek that I am Plus I got monitors, memory and some cards. Outfitted my kids with computers and even got some older servers.

Take what you can get man They will come in handy sometime. Someone can use them.
Right now, I'm running great RH9 on a 400MHz/256MB machine.

I would take the ones with the largest hard drives.

I know what you mean about getting old machines and never using them.. my dad always gets old junk from his office, in fact this laptop I am using its a 500Mhz PIII with 128megs of ram running WinXP pro it was just sitting at his office, and no one wanted it, so I am using it.. of course in this case its not mine, since there is a chance they will want it back one day. Other then this we have about 7 computers being stored for parts, we have a computer in almost every room which would be about 8 total set up, 2 of those which are linux servers for our home network, then there is this laptop, my dads laptops, my stepmom's laptop, and some old toshiba labtops that are not being used..

Yeah so you see we have computer junk all around my house, mostly since my dad and I are two huge geeks, and everyone else in our house loves the fact that they have constant access to a computer, I remember when my old mac was sold and I has to start sharing a PC with my brothers before I got my desktop oh that sucked having to wait my turn for the computer.. now I have my own computer and this laptop on all the time on the net..

Now what to do with those 7 old PC's, I was thinking I could make servers for myself, yet my parents said NO MORE computers could come in my room.. and my stepmom told my dad NO MORE computers in our living room so I guess those 7 machines will just sit out in storage forever..

i would grab at least the 400MHz+ ones. i love the old "bulletproof" hardware, and they make great projects.

Yeah....I have to agree.

I had a Dell PII 350MHz box that never had any problems. In fact it's still running today at my sisters house It runs Win2000 and kicks butt.

I have never had a more reliable PC than my 350MHz Dell. It's like between 350MHz and 750MHz they made some good stuff. Now stuff is just so cheap. It just keeps getting cheaper. I'm not saying its not reliable, but sometimes stuff just feels cheap when you have it in your hand.

I think I will try to get another 400MHz box and I may even try to get my old Dell 350Mhz box back. Just because I loved that box

I'd grab the PII xx0 as they'll perform at 100MHz FSB (the xx3 live in 66MHz land). They make very capable file/print servers or a lightweight workstation. The only drawback I can see is the Compaq Brand. Get yourself the following tems:

1. 25-pack of floppies so you can make all the pretty 1.44MB images for the Compaq management (F10) tools.
2. A Torx T-15 driver
3. all the Compaq boxes you can fit in the car - you'll need to cannibalize them for things like bezels/drive mounting rails/more screws (Stuff you normally can't find anywhere else but Compaq)
4. All the .pdf documentation you can find for your models

I should be all set then, because our company (A large hospital) uses nothing but Compaq servers and workstations. I've been at this job for the last 3 years and I have the T-15 driver, extra screws, power supplies, etc....

I know what you mean. Got all the disks and such. Maybe I'll put these puppies in my car tomorrow

Peace,
Whitehat

If I were you, I would grab ALL of them and send ALL of them to me!

seriously, i would throw like 20$ (plus all shiping) paypal someones way for a nice old 233 or 333 mhz computer, although it would need a CD rom drive.

(dont seem like a bad deal for you seing as they are free)

Could you possibly put four of the screws that hold the HDD in a Compaq Deskpro in an envelope and send them to Sweden? I would be eternally grateful.

Those screws have a big round head and once you have put them on the HDD you slide it in place in the box. I have a Deskpro PII 400 (196 MB) as my main Linux machine. It's really got all the power I need in a nice (and quiet!) package.

Regards
Martin

I sure will.

PM me or Email me with your address and I'll ship them to you. I have an almost infinite supply of those torx head screws. You want 8 of them?

Funny.......I have the exact same box sitting here in my closet. I is a PII 400. Came with a 10 Gig drive and 128MB RAM.


Peace,
Whitehat

Hey!
Wouldn't that pile of comps make a great Beowulf-Cluster?
*drools*
Think of what monster of a rendering-farm you could make out of that....

I would get as many of the old PCs that I could carry or at least that I could store. Aside from building a network or using them for parts there may be a charitable org. around there that you can donate what you don't want to, or even sell them on E-Bay or at a local swap meet. Pretty much anything is better then filling up another landfill with them.

Bubba169

Yeah Bubba, and I was just talking to some friends about that the other day.. it seems us upper middle class american geeks take too much granted, I mean we get new computers every year or so, and so we end up throwing alot of computers out.. so yeah we do need to find better things to do with our computers..