New Life for Old Computers

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Hieb

So my question to the forum is this: What are your thoughts on a cool use for an old computer (or 3)? I know I could play around learning Linux or something like that, but I'd really like more of a short term project. I remember reading an article about turning an old laptop into a digital picture frame, and another on retrofitting an old radio/jukebox into an MP3 player, so I was looking for similar ideas for things to do with my rather large paperweights.

Plug them into a personal home network to use as network hard-drives.

I still have a P1 200 MHz computer in my basement that's so old it doesn't even have a USB port on it. But its 4Gb hard-drive and its Ethernet card still work just fine as a network hard drive. At the rate that I eat up storage space, I need a new 250 Gb external hard drive every 8 months, so every bit of storage space I can get is definitely work it.