What to do with some decent computers?

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:03 pm

Hi all,

I'm in the middle of a computer switch-a-roo here. At the moment, I have the following:

Top-of-the-line AMD 64 computer

2 PIII computers (both are 733MHz, but I'm going to try to upgrade to 1GHz, one has 384 and the other has 256MB RAM)

Soon, I'm going to be using a laptop (which I'll be getting soon) 95% of the time, when I go to college. So, I'm trying to figure out what to do for the next few months before then. Right now, I'm thinking of doing this:

AMD64 goes in the basement, where the projector and stuff is. Then I'd have a nice media PC, something that can even play some nice games to boot.

Then, for the other 2, I was thinking of using one full time for web browsing (mostly all I do anymore) and another for a workstation (I'm getting into programming a bit more, and wouldn't mind some dedicated system)

Oh yeah, I do have this small limitation: one computer (the workstation I'm planning) has a small (6GB) hard drive. Probably not the worst thing in the world, but not exactly the greatest either. If anyone has any ideas of what else I could do with it, let me know (and no, I'm not giving it to anyone

)

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:22 pm

If you want one just for web browsing, put the 6 gig HD in the one with less RAM. Install Slax. Problem solved.

On the AMD64 machine, try looking into one o fthe Media Center distros. Geexbox is a pretty neat little boot CD, it plays most of the media files I throw at it and it's only something like 10 megs.

For the workstation PC, use either XP or some desktop Linux distro like SuSE. Or better yet, dual boot!

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:58 pm

Well, I just installed RH9 (I know, it's old, but I wanted something RedHat based and this was all I had handy) and it works surprisingly well. I think it'll make a decent workstation for now, even with 6GB (all of the programs take up 2.5GB, and I can't imagine installing more than 1GB of stuff after this... which leaves me just less than 3GB for code... no problem

Oh yeah, this version of RH is surprisingly good, it even detected my hugely off-brand monitor (a Planar? Who has heard of that? Aw well, it still works well)

Post by **Skyone** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:13 pm

MAME cab?

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:13 am

already have one

(although, there is a possibility for another, but I doubt it'll happen)

Post by **Sparkfist** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:42 am

I wouldn't be the purfect or fastest, but you could connect the three computers and have a beowulf cluster. You could use the linux live distro ParallelKnoppix.

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:46 am

My freinds freind has a 3 comp rig all wired together to 3 screens. And each comp rocks.

I wish I could do something like that.

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:29 am

beowulf cluster? I'm going to have to look into this simply because of the name.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:31 am

You could sell all three of them, put some of the earnings towards a better laptop (media, gaming, etc), and have some extra spending cash in your pocket.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:47 am

The bandwidth between networked computers would be insufficient for a single contiguous installation of Windows to operate over all of them. Sorry, but 3 networked gaming machines does not equal a single gaming machine with 3x the power

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:22 pm

Install OS2 or OPenBSD and run an autodialer or a WWIV BBS out of it. Something fun, but utterly useless.