Any Ideas?

[WarmFluffyUK]

A while ago I was given a dead Acerpower 1000:

I didn't bother with it until yesterday and I found that it had 3 faulty caps on the motherboard, so I replaced them and to my surprise it now works. I can only think that the reason it died is because they are so close to a heat sink which cooked em.

Anyway, the reason for this thread is have you guys any ideas what I am now going to do with it? It's a really small system, very quiet, has 512mb of RAM, an Athlon 2.8Ghz CPU and 80GB HDD. I don't want to use it as any kind of server as leaving it on permanently would only kill the capacitors again. I did think of using it for old DOS games, so I installed DOS 6.22 on it and after tweaking the config.sys and autoexec.bat I got about 612k of usable conventional RAM available for programs, which is pretty good considering I got everything loaded such as CD-ROM extensions/mouse drivers etc. But the big stumbling block was that the audio isn't a sound blaster and for old DOS games you really need a bog standard Creative SB16, so I have turned this down as an option. Also it doesn't have any expansion slots, and DOS doesn't gel with an external USB sound card (I might be wrong about this as I don't think I will be able to find USB Soundblaster DOS drivers as DOS does not support USB).

Another option may have been to connect it to my Plasma TV and use it as a media device, but I already have my main PC connected to that via a 10 meter HDMI cable, plus I have a Wii and PS3 so I think I have media streaming and games on my TV covered.

It seems a shame to have this sitting there doing nothing, so any madcap or even sane ideas would be welcomed!

 

[torpor]

Dedicated Torrent machine? You could set it up with Linux so that when you turn it on, it gets right back to where it was, torrenting, and turn it off and so on when you need to ..

Other than that, maybe use it as a build-host for development? Get it configured with all the Wiz toolchain/Pandora toolchain/GP2X toolchain love you can find, and configure it to run as a nightly build host for .. some .. development project?

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Dedicated Torrent machine? You could set it up with Linux so that when you turn it on, it gets right back to where it was, torrenting, and turn it off and so on when you need to ..

Other than that, maybe use it as a build-host for development? Get it configured with all the Wiz toolchain/Pandora toolchain/GP2X toolchain love you can find, and configure it to run as a nightly build host for .. some .. development project?

Thanks for the reply

I already have a machine that is permanently on acting as a media streamer that I have uTorrent on so I have that covered.

A dev machine may be a very good idea as I have just ordered a USB KVM switcher with this machine in mind, I might just do this!

 

[Javacat]

Turn it into a carputer!

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Turn it into a carputer!

LOL...

Only one problem, I don't have a car, but a push-bike-puter, now there's a thought

 

[Javacat]

You could be the first person to build a car around a computer, rather than a computer around a car


I did have other ideas, but i've forgotten


Edit: Just had another idea! Got any more TV's where you live?? You could set it up as a node, streaming crap from your main media PC.

 

[Titcher]

A system to view said shared media on? This could easily handle 720p h264 and 1080p if the GPU is any good. Maybe a MAME/Emulation system, could be pretty cool with how small it is. I'm tapped out of ideas, it's pretty tough to think of uses for this thing. As a final one, maybe a computer for a computer-less relative?

 

[Chip]

It's still new enough to be useful to somebody. Pass it along to someone who doesn't have a PC, or has one too old to be useful. I upgrade frequently, and I always give my old equipment away to friends, family and co-workers. For someone who has been running a PIII with Windows ME for almost a decade, that Athlon 64 would be a nice upgrade.

Even if you don't know anybody personally, you could always give it to the Goodwill (or whatever the UK equivalent is).

 

[trooper]

Linux with DosEmu works pretty good (Not tried it on that many games yet) as a Dos-based computer on newer hardware (Including sound), Especially if you use a minimal linux distribution. Which can help reduce the initial boot process.

Maybe worth a try ?.

Trooper

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

possibly worth a look.

In my experience though, DOS games access the hardware directly which is why they were so fast, and also so dependant on hardware. DirectX is slow but at least it standardised things.

The games I wish to run will really need an ancient system, which is why I am looking into getting an old 486DX4 system, anyone have one of them I could have?