WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (Full Version)

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Walker311 -> WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/23/2008 10:05:01 PM)

Someone gave me a Gateway2000 Pentium 2, 350 mhz pc with about 3 gig of space.

It is like brand new though it came out in 1998. The video card is junk It has a suprisingly nice Boston sound system. I loaded W98 SE, firefox, and wireless internet access and it is great for surfing the web.

I like playing with this stuff but really do not wish to put money in an outdated system. There is really not a lot I can do other than adding a larger hard drive and playing around with Linux os which I have no experience with.

Any ideas?



Walker311 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/23/2008 10:07:13 PM)

Oh! Just for fun, I tried to overclock but don't really know how. I changed the jumper and set it to 400 in the bios, did a speed check and it rated it @ 348mhz so I must not know what I'm doing.



PolarBear -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/23/2008 10:26:37 PM)

Try Linux on it, but don't expect too much -- just as you wouldn't expect too much running the other operating system on it.

You'll probably need to settle for a distribution targeted to small PCs. Or an old version of a mainstream distribution, but I don't recommend those.

I think the real beauty of those type of computers is if you really want to tinker with Linux -- as in put together your own mini-distribution for a specific application.



Lurker -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/23/2008 11:57:37 PM)

Change the speed back to 350mhz. Then if you can burn a CD somewhere, get Puppylinux and try it out. http://www.puppylinux.org Or maybe try slackware out. http://www.slackware.com You should look into the "Zipslack" option. :)



Walker311 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/24/2008 12:18:31 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lurker

Change the speed back to 350mhz. Then if you can burn a CD somewhere, get Puppylinux and try it out. http://www.puppylinux.org Or maybe try slackware out. http://www.slackware.com You should look into the "Zipslack" option. :)


Why change it back?
What is zipslack?

I was hoping there was something I could do with my media. I thought about getting an external drive and dedicating this for our family pics. It can't handle our digital video but wish that it could.



DaveW -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/25/2008 8:10:43 AM)

quote:

Why change it back?
Overclocking, esp without changing other settings to match and upgrading the cooling system will fry the cpu.

You can get several different small and/or older linux distros to work on it.

Puppylinux (there is a christian edition called church pup)
D*** Small Linux
Feather linux
Vector Linux (I tried this one but it was a very limited distro)
Austrumi
BasicLinux (runs on 386)
DeLi Linux (runs on 486)



Lurker -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/25/2008 8:52:51 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Walker311

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lurker

Change the speed back to 350mhz. Then if you can burn a CD somewhere, get Puppylinux and try it out. http://www.puppylinux.org Or maybe try slackware out. http://www.slackware.com You should look into the "Zipslack" option. :)


Why change it back?
What is zipslack?

I was hoping there was something I could do with my media. I thought about getting an external drive and dedicating this for our family pics. It can't handle our digital video but wish that it could.

DaveW answered the overclocking question. To be honest, at that speed you wouldn't notice too much difference.
I suggested Zipslack because a) it's a small distro and b) you can use it on top of Win98.



psaulm119 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/26/2008 12:07:32 AM)

When I first got online, the guys I respected all said that instead of overclocking, that I should just take whatever money I could reasonably devote to repairs (due to over-heating and -working the computer), and just buy more RAM. The system would get faster, but without damaging the computer. I know that is a generalization, but then again I've never had to repair any hardware as a result of goofing it up. Take it with however many grains of salt as you wish.

Sounds like you've already figured out a use for it--you can use it as a second computer, when the first one is occupied. Or is there someone young in your family who might want something they can do their homework on?



Walker311 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/26/2008 12:36:53 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: psaulm119

When I first got online, the guys I respected all said that instead of overclocking, that I should just take whatever money I could reasonably devote to repairs (due to over-heating and -working the computer), and just buy more RAM. The system would get faster, but without damaging the computer. I know that is a generalization, but then again I've never had to repair any hardware as a result of goofing it up. Take it with however many grains of salt as you wish.

Sounds like you've already figured out a use for it--you can use it as a second computer, when the first one is occupied. Or is there someone young in your family who might want something they can do their homework on?


The overclocking idea was just something to do for the fun of it but as Lurker said the speed would be insignificant.

I have a 10 year old who is spoiled by a much faster desktop (THAT I NEVER GET TO USE) and the online games he plays would not work properly on this outdated pc.

As soon as I inherited this machine I immediately popped in more memory hijacked from another outdated machine so it has 256 meg memory.

I did run across an interesting idea. I could use this as strictly a surfing machine since it is suprisingly fast without any of the speed sucking virus/firewall software and if it gets one, I could simply format and start over. The W98 as the OS is not very stable so I definitely will be looking at linux mandrake.

It has integrated sound and video and no place for installing an old agp card I have laying around so I am limited to further upgrades.

I was really hoping that I could get an extraordinary idea that would warrant it using electricity rather than sitting at my feet unplugged.

I did think about loading it up with some of the old games I still have from years ago and letting Walker have a crack at them but got a feeling he would quickly get bored.

You know it is kind of like a friend of mine who had an aunt that died and she left him a rarely used antique car in great shape but definitely a gas hog and it sits in his driveway... in the way!

One day I will be like that old car and this pc.... [:(]

[8D]



Walker311 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (7/29/2008 10:17:02 PM)

For what it's worth!

I installed Xubuntu. It was definitely a learning experience and not exactly overly impressed yet.

Except for the quick updates, I don't care for the terminal installs which was a suprise. I prefer download, click, install.

The rendering is somewhat jerky. Performance is not as good but I expect the trade-off with be more stability as opposed to windows 98SE.

I feel pretty good that I was able to eventually figure out that the ".iso" image would not work after burning 2 or 3 cd's and that I need to find an app that would extract the iso and then I could install everything.



Walker311 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (8/1/2008 7:03:09 AM)

Update.

I fdisk hd and put W98se back on this pc and it screams. I couldn't be happier!

Xubuntu is for people that don't have anything better to do. Maybe there was too great a learning curve. Maybe I'm too old!

It is going to be the perfect machine for surfing the net because I'm not going to put a lot of junk on it. If I land a bug, I'll simply blow it away and a start over.



psaulm119 -> RE: WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS PC? (8/1/2008 10:16:57 AM)

Not too sure if this is too late, but the last two times I've installed an OS, I've created a separate partition for my documents, so if/when I do re-install the OS, I don't have to copy and then re-install the documents as well. Since I've decided to foreswear experimenting with Linux as well, I simply have OS and documents partitions; but if I were still into doing that, I'd create a third partition for Ubuntu as well. I don't know if the 98 installer will do this for you; I know the XP installation process can create partitions.



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