Ideas for an old Pentium 3?

[gordon.cooke]

So I have an old Pentium 3 Compaq laying around. 900 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, and I think the HD is about 60 GB. Anyone have ideas what I could put it to use for? I have gotten some older PuppyLinux running on it in the past (havent turned it on in about a year). Havent tried Mint XFCE or LXDE yet. Its kind of big, and noisy so Im not inclinded to put it by the TV for any kind of media use. Perhaps for something headless? It only has PATA drives and I already have 1TB SATA drives in my main desktop, so network storage doesnt even seem useful. Perhaps a webserver but I dont know what kind of content would be worthwhile.

Im open to any suggestions of how I might get some usefullness out of it. (and some fun- I just enjoy tinkering with computers)

[axel668]

If NAS isn't feasible, there's not that much left ...
could use it as router though, set up a real firewall, caching DNS / Web Proxy ...
you could also use it as some kind of "cloud server", to host your own web applications or files that you want to access from the web ...
or maybe store backups on it ?

[Dennis99]

http://www.smoothwall.org/ or maybe

http://www.zoneminder.com/

[LarryP]

If all else fails with mint xfce or peppermint ice on it , could be a nice gift for a kid who couldn't afford one for school.

[Joylove]

try building a MAME Cabinet with it
http://cmdrtaco.net/jubei/
http://chris.polymathic.net/cabinet/

[tdockery97]

If all else fails with mint xfce or peppermint ice on it , could be a nice gift for a kid who couldn't afford one for school.

Best possible idea IMO.

[Pierre]

Chuck anti-X onto it - designed for that <huge> amount of ram.

[kwisher]

http://www.smoothwall.org/ or maybe

http://www.zoneminder.com/

If you can't find a worthy donor then I will have to agree with Dennis99. Another gateway/firewall distro I have used besides SmoothWall is ClearOS.

[indaymadel]

Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS

Been running it on Pentium 4 with 128mb of ram. Haven't tried on Pentium 3 though.
Main purpose is for DHCP and Squid Proxy Server. Though, I have a router, Squid makes re-loading of most visited websites loads a lot faster.

[gordon.cooke]

An update:
So I decided how to put the old compaq to work. I installed Ubunutu Server with a LAMP and OpenSSH. I havent set up dyndns yet, but thats the plan. Then set my router so this server is the DMZ and leave everything else in the house behind the firewall.

The MAME cabinet idea was EXTREMELY tempting! I almost went that route. Thanks joylove, I never would have thought of it. It came down to two issues. 1) the only spare monitor I have in the house right now is a 14inch LCD that i felt was just too small and I use it as my spare to lug around for testing old setups and whatnot. Im not willing to invest the $$$ for a monitor just to keep this old thing alive and 2) I dont have any room for a full arcade cabinet! or even a bartop. But definately my first project if I ever move into a bigger house.

So I went with the LAMP server. I have a database project I developed in ASP about 5 years ago (pure MS shop). At that time I had built an Acess front end (for the local network folks) and a web frontend in ASP (for folks outside the building). For various reasons the project died I finished it (personnel and management changes). A buddy of mine has mentioned several times over the past several years that he now has some folks that have a definate need and market for exactly that type of database and has been bugging me to update it. So thats what Im going to use this little server for. I already got the database setup. That wasnt too hard as I had saved the script to recreate it. Just a few hicups going form MSSQL to MySQL. Now Im going through the ASP web pages and converting them over to PHP. There's over 100 of them to do, but it's only 5 or 6 pages that represent what get used 95% of the time. The rest are a bunch of little tools and tidbits (adding/editing new entries, admin functions etc). Gotta love dynamic content!

So this is my little hobby project. Past few nights, and for the forseable future, I lounge in bed with my laptop and re-write and debug php. I figure once I get the basic functionality all working I'll open up the server and my buddy (he's in a different timezone) can show some of his folks. Then go form there. Just a hobby, but hey, may be able to get some money out of it someday. Never know.

[dude15]

So I have an old Pentium 3 Compaq laying around. 900 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, and I think the HD is about 60 GB. Anyone have ideas what I could put it to use for?

TinyCore.