What can be done with old computers that are very low end?

3 years ago by ShySpark to c/retro_computing

So me and my fmaily members have a bunch of old junky desktops,computers, and laptops but they refuse to get rid of any they wont even let me get rid of any of my old ones. i have pc and laptops dating from windows xp to windows 8.1 and most of them are missing minir parts that are needed like a good amount of ram, sound card, wifi, etc. is there something i cna do with old pc's escpecially ones with no sound card? i would buy upgrades buy pc parts are so pricey even old ones and i tend to collect diffrent computers fom thrift stores aswell, the pc rang from 1gb of ram-to 2gb of ram so there all slow, old and janky but just plan annoying.

any tips or suggestions would be very helpful.

load all comments

knowncarbage 21 points 3 years ago

Linux & BSD can make them useful as servers, media centres, retro emulators or even a desktop pc if you are patient.

They will chew more power than a raspberry pi but they are easier to come by.

An old desktop and an old laptop is enough to get a solid selfhosted homelab and media centre up and running.

Current favorite suggestion is install linux, navidrome & tailscale on an old machine with your music library. Then connect with Symfonium, web client or other app and enjoy.

save

path: 0 151597, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 3

ggt 9 points 3 years ago

^^ This. A Pi-Hole is pretty good too if you just want something very basic. Or a NAS if you have SSDs (or dont mind slow disk speed.)

save

path: 0 151597 158165, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1

knowncarbage 4 points 3 years ago

PiHole is good shout.

Not sure the ssd matters too much for a basic home server but will depend on what you are using it for. If needs are minimal, you crave speed and you have 1GB or more ram to play with you can run something like Alpine diskless purely in ram for a very fast OS and root filesystem & use rotating rust over usb2 for reading & writing media.

I'm using my 2008 htpc with 1gb ram to play around with stuff the past year or two but it ran for a few years before that 24/7 with the OS running on a flashdrive over usb2, storage on an original internal hdd and some additional ancient portable usb2 hdd's plugged in. I set it up to test it and was planning to move to a diskless ram setup for speed but never felt the need to, would be grim as a desktop but serving files and ssh access is just fine.

Spinning rust is great for media reading & writing. ram or usb is great for a basic home server os.

ssd's are great for desktops and high performance server needs but not really a big issue if you just want to block ads, watch a movie from another room or keep pressing 'next track' when driving whilst listening to tunes.

save

path: 0 151597 158165 193828, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

anonynorbi 8 points 3 years ago

Good suggestions. Linux can do wonders on very low end hardware. Make sure to pick a good distro that has a good package manager with all of the software that you need. I recommend to look into Arch based distros if you feel like tinkering a bit. Debian and Fedora based distros would also do the trick, but the AUR from arch linux will cover all the software you'll need (use yay package manager for AUR support).

Good luck and happy tinkering!

save

path: 0 151597 185558, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0