What to do with some decent computers?

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SpongeBuell
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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 :P )
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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!

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

MAME cab?

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

already have one :P

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

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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.

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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.

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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 :P

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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.

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