"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > Who runs an old PC at home as their main PC.
>
> My girlfriend.
>
> > What are the specs and what changes have you made to keep it usable?
>
> Athlon XP2400+, with several hand-me-down parts from my PC when I upgrade.
> At the moment I think she has a 19" LCD, nVidia FX5900, a gig of RAM and an
> 80GB HD in there.  It started life as my main PC while at university, IIRC
> then it only had 256MB RAM, a tiny 15" CRT and a 12GB hard drive or
> something.

I'm glad, that I'm not the only one with such a computer. :-)
I have only one computer. It had the newest technology a few years ago.
It is Pentium 4 with 2,4 GHz; one GB Ram and Gforce 6600.
I do not dare to call that beauty old (anymore). :-)
I started with 512 MB Ram and a Gforce 4800.
I got also "hand-me-down parts", when my bothers upgrades their computers. :-)
So good to have brothers. :-D

Regards,
bluetree

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
news:487e25ae$1@news.povray.org...
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:11:19 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Define "Main".
>>
>> LOL! The idea of multiple functional PCs in a single home is 
>> about as
>> crazy as owning more than one car...
>
> Less so for a family, or someone who works in "the biz". :-)
>
> I've got probably 10 functional PCs in the house (at least) - 6 
> of them
> are at my desk at the moment.  One for my wife, one for my kid - 
> make it
> more like 12-14 functional PCs in the house.  The rest are in the
> basement not being used ATM.
>
> But only one car. :-)
>
> Jim

Sheesh!
I keep about 18 computers running in my home lab.
I guess it depends on what you do with machines.
I do a lot of network design/testing/breaking and
I like swapping hardware around looking for optimums
in the strangest places.

Yeah - only one car too.
Traded in a Jeep (15 mpg) for a Mazda (31 pg).
Need anything more be said about that?

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On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:20:20 -0700, pan wrote:

> Sheesh!
> I keep about 18 computers running in my home lab. I guess it depends on
> what you do with machines. I do a lot of network design/testing/breaking
> and I like swapping hardware around looking for optimums in the
> strangest places.

:-)  I use VMware for that when I need to have more physical machines 
than real machines.  Or if I need more real machines, I can probably use 
some in one of the labs at work (we've got one lab with >1500 computers 
in it, but that lab has recently had to be moved so I don't know (a) 
where it is, or (b) if it's completely set up again yet).

The control systems in that lab are pretty cool.  They've got a control 
console they can use to change network topology, power settings ranging 
from a single machine to the entire room (including rows and racks at a 
time), and the last time I actually used machines in the lab (which is 
some 12 years ago now or so), a custom imaging solution for configuring 
the systems.

> Yeah - only one car too.
> Traded in a Jeep (15 mpg) for a Mazda (31 pg). Need anything more be
> said about that?

:-)

Jim

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scott wrote:
> Athlon XP2400+, with several hand-me-down parts from my PC when I upgrade.
> At the moment I think she has a 19" LCD, nVidia FX5900, a gig of RAM and
> an
> 80GB HD in there.  It started life as my main PC while at university, IIRC
> then it only had 256MB RAM, a tiny 15" CRT and a 12GB hard drive or
> something.

That you call an old PC?

My aunt currently has 256MB of RAM on her computer. Don't remember other
specs.

The (small) hard disk is uselessly split in two partitions, C: is running
low on space, many programs refuse to install on D:. So one day I took a
Ubuntu CD with me (since I already had it) and tried booting it, to run
gparted and try making C bigger and D smaller. After half an hour, I gave
up on trying to boot the disc. Turned out it doesn't boot with so little
RAM. It kept reading stuff from the CD over and over again because it had
0% of cache.

(Some other day I managed to do the partition resize with a dedicated
gparted liveCD, which is *very* lightweight)

My aunt says she'd upgrade the machine, but she promised my cousin (her
daughter) a computer for her own on her next birthday, and she doesn't have
the money to *both* upgrade and buy a new one...

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Define "Main".
> 
> LOL! The idea of multiple functional PCs in a single home is about as 
> crazy as owning more than one car...

Actually, I think 2-3 is the absolute minimum for home environment. One 
firewall, one server (which includes all the RAIDed disk space and makes 
awful noise) being at cellar or closet oslt and one workstation (which 
is ment to be nice and *quiet*).

One also need a spare car to use, when the main car brokes down oslt. Or 
a service contract.

So, 10 computers listed atm and 3 cars. That should be enough for a 
single man ;).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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> Actually, I think 2-3 is the absolute minimum for home environment. One 
> firewall, one server (which includes all the RAIDed disk space and makes 
> awful noise) being at cellar or closet oslt and one workstation (which is 
> ment to be nice and *quiet*).

I guess you can count the free modem I got from my ISP as a "computer" :-) 
That's my firewall.

Apart from that I only have 2 "real" PCs.  But then I have 2 work laptops 
and a PS3 (which streams video and audio from the other PCs to the TV).

> One also need a spare car to use, when the main car brokes down oslt. Or a 
> service contract.

Or have a reliable car, or live somewhere with good public transport.

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On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:27:01 +0200, scott wrote:

>> One also need a spare car to use, when the main car brokes down oslt.
>> Or a service contract.
> 
> Or have a reliable car, or live somewhere with good public transport.

Or both. :-)

Jim

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scott wrote:
> 
>> One also need a spare car to use, when the main car brokes down oslt. 
>> Or a service contract.
> 
> Or have a reliable car, or live somewhere with good public transport.

A service contract (or better yet a non-stop contract) IS what makes a 
car reliable.

Like someone said about a PC - would you risk your life on a normal, 
daily-use car? :)

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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And lo on Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:27:01 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake, saying:

> and a PS3

Gasp so that makes three people Andrew knows who own this "rich man's toy"  
- mind blowing! ;-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Tom Austin <taustin> wrote:
> Who runs an old PC at home as their main PC.
Me at home and my mom at work


> What are the specs and what changes have you made to keep it usable?
My "main" PC has had quite an interesting life:
It started out as a AMD Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB RAM, a 160GB Samsung disk and
an Epox EP-8RDA+ mainboard in early 2003
The Processor got overclocked to 2080 MHz with a 180MHz FSB and ran fine for
about 1 1/2 years 24/7 with boinc running. Then it started to have sporadic
errors, so I downclocked it a bit and got myself an Athlon XP 3000+
In the meantime i added a few Harddisks (2x200GB Samsung I wish I had never
bought) and a DVB-S card and used it as PVR (the reaon i hated th Samsung
disks, they coudn't sustain the data rate of multiple streams being read and
written). Some time in 2006 the board capacitors blew up and I had to replace
the board, which wasn't easy. Where in hell did you get a socket A board with a
minimum of 4 PCI slots (3 analog tuner cards and a IDE controller) and AGP in
2006? Luckily I stumbled over a Epox 8RDA6 Pro board in an online shop.
Sometime last year my trusty old nVidia GeForce 4200Ti died on me and i
replaced it with a GF6600GT. This Machine is still running Windows 2000
(probably not much longer, will upgrade to XP) and serves as my PVR and office
computer.

My mom's work computer is a dual processor P-III-650 with a whooping 128MB RAM
(doesn't recognize more in one slot and the second slot is under the CD burner
and not accessible and this mainboard is *huge*) and a 30GB IBM Disk on a
Gigabyte GA-6BXDS mainboard with onboard SCSI.
It started out with only one P-II-550 (couldn't afford more at the time)
I mainly bought it for the onboard SCSI I wanted to have for the Scanner and the
CD-Burner. At the time (1999 or something) the board was cheaper than the SCSI
contoller with the
same adaptec chipset alone.

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