What can I do with my old PC?

[dtt]

I'm thinking of upgrading my mobo/processor. Right now I've got a 667 mHz Celeron & a crappy mobo w/integrated sound/video. I've got 3 pci slots & a cnr dust collector (nope, no AGP). You can see why I want to upgrade.

Besides testing the aerodynamics of the mobo w & w/o cpu or gaining a new paperweight, can I make anything useful out of this? Specifically, could I make a halfway decent video recorder out of it? I'm not worried about playback, just recording. It won't even be at my house -- I would hook it up to my girlfriend's cable for recording on & transfer files to a portable hard drive. What would be a cheap way of converting it? Any suggestions, jokes, or ridicule are welcome.

[Bires]

It sounds like it would record and compress MPEG 1 and 2 video OK, but may have some trouble with DIVX or XVID compression. So, if you don't mind some recompression artifacts, it would be fine for recording video.

If you have a large enough hard drive apx 6 GB free per hour of video, you can record uncompressed, and then compress to DIVX, XVID, and WMV afterward. Or, you can do what I used to do and leave one of your IDE ribbon cables outside of your case and hook up a hard drive-record what you need, then take the harddrive back to a faster computer for editting/compression.

[dtt]

Thanks. I've got a 100 gig USB drive, so I might use that to move it. I wasn't even thinking about recording uncompressed. I might have to do that.

[Joshua]

Yeah, make it an Atari emulator and play Pitfall!

[Nija]

or you could donate it to charity, so someone who doesn't have a computer could have one...

:shrug:

[philly]

Originally posted by DarkFury
if I had that, I'd probably turn it into a "web server". :D

yeah i would turn it to a web server also.

[Bires]

Originally posted by Nija
or you could donate it to charity, so someone who doesn't have a computer could have one...

:shrug:

I wish more ppl would do this. Pentium II and III computers are quite capable machines. MS gives away Win98 and sometimes even Office2000 to charities and schools.

[dtt]

I considered giving it away, I've rebuilt some "broken" pc's my office got rid of for a charity -- i.e. I did a llf of the hard drive & they worked.
If I can devise a use for it, though, I want to keep it. Call me selfish. I mainly had the idea of recording video in mind (think I'll probably do this), although the ability to play Combat, Pitfall and Space Invaders again is EVER so tempting. Especially Pitfall. I just love finding gold and silver bars ad infinitum. :heh:

[Cantacuzene]

Play around with Linux, its what I'd do if i had a 2nd crappy box.

[pd123]

Originally posted by Nija
or you could donate it to charity, so someone who doesn't have a computer could have one...

:shrug: Or donate it to a charity so you can get a tax write-off. I gave my old computer, printer and assorted items to Vietnam vets.

[Nija]

Originally posted by Cantacuzene
Play around with Linux, its what I'd do if i had a 2nd crappy box.

that's what I did when I built my new one. I took the old celery took all the crap i wanted off of it, and then formatted it into linux. It's a learning experience to be sure. Plus I hear it looks good on resumes n such :P