What do you do with your old PCs? (other than paper weights :O)

Hmm.. now that sounds like interestingness, Doc. To ask a really silly questions - what do I then do with the machine? What can it do? Sorry - I am purely interested in practical uses, so please advise :O)

All my home computers are old... so I use them as "normal computers"
 
PS. If you do not miss Vista, I can not recommend Ubuntu. Take Knoppix instead. You can use that for virus free Internet browsing with a guarantee that nothing from your activity is kept locally (till you enable "write to local disk").

I sell mine, because I get Shiny New Toy Syndrome(tm) really bad with computers and buy new tech all the time. So the old ones are still worth using for other people.
 
Well, to be more accurate, I sell the parts, since I don't buy new systems, just buy parts to upgrade the one I have. I upgrade it piecemeal whenever I see something I decide I want.

LJB
Hmm.. now that sounds like interestingness, Doc. To ask a really silly questions - what do I then do with the machine? What can it do? Sorry - I am purely interested in practical uses, so please advise :O)

Put Harrison's MixBus3 on it, with of all its plugins you'll have a cool mastering work station.

I have a couple of old PC's stored away in the closet.  I don't have the heart to throw them out.  I think one day I will boot them up again, but that most likely will never happen.  I keep the one around that has 32-bit XP on it because I have some old electronics/programming software on it.  Maybe I will do that again some day...but most likely, that will never happen.
 
At least in my closet, the components are left to decay on their own rather than be held over a fire in China by some toddler with no shoes.

Doktor Avalanche
And why no love for Ubuntu?

 

azslow3
This thread is about old computers... Modern Ubuntu versions comes with fancy desktop. It has memory leaks and can consume more then 3GB of RAM after a while. On my 2GB notebook I had to switch on swap after upgrade to 14.x

You brought it up.. I've NEVER experienced this. The desktop it comes with by default nowadays is far from fancy and just does the job. I don't see zillions of complaints in the forums either. I'm sorry you've had a bad experience but this is far from the norm.

Ludwig
I keep my old machines and add to my network - I use Vienna Pro so whatever system they use, be it Xp, 7, 8, 32 bit or 64bit (I think even Mac?), I can use them on my new machine, whatever that may be - so I leave software on them that I don't want to / can't move for whatever reason (only 32bit, gone bust, been sold, disappeared, whatever) So i still have access to the software should I need it. Used to be more important as the Vienna Pro system allows you to  share the processing load - to be honest with the power of new machines that's hardly an issue now.
Also of course, it can be very handy if your computer goes wrong - you immediately have a back up
Nigel
 
 

ampfixer
I've donated old PC's to charitable organizations. There's still many folks that would be happy to have cast-off's.

I gave an older PC to a PC-less relative once.  Never again.  That ended up being a PC-noob support job from Heck for several years.  Not because he PC was broke.  It was a constant stream of How_Do_I? stuff.
 
Around here, charities would **** of the PC doesn't have an i7, 32G and WinX installed.

I end up recycling mine as well after pulling anything that can be used on a new system from it. The only time this didn't happen was on the IDE->SATA jump where I had two machines fully functional, but even then the older machine went because it was unused and slow anyway.

Just upgraded my DAW PC from the 8 year old XP one. The wife now uses it for Facebooking, emailing and printing stuff. It still has Sonar 8 on it, so I can use it as a back-up if need be.

I have a fast quad core 64 bit machine running Win 7 but I still use my previous computer which is also a Win XP P4 32 bit machine.  The thing to do is to integrate it into your system.  I have a nice audio card in it as well and a midi interface.  So I have audio and midi between the two machines.  Not only that I have them networked as well.  That works great. 
 
Reaper make a set of free plug-ins which you can download and install.  One of them is called ReaStream.  There are 64 bit and 32 bit versions of that plug so it can be installed on both machines.  It allows you to send audio to and from the second machine rather nicely and the latency is low as well.
 
I often use the XP machine just a virtual instrument.  I still have over 70 virtual instruments on that machine. Many are 32 bit only and not available as 64 bit versions so they cannot be used on a 64 bit machine.  I now have full access to them.  Many VST's are stand alone so no host is even needed.  Evan a single core 3 GHz processor can do either one or several virtual instruments at once standing on its ear and they sound great.  I have got some great reverbs and things on it too so it is handy for just an extra reverb etc..
 
Also that machine has a UAD 1 card installed too so I can send audio to and fro and use the UAD stuff as well.
 
I have got Cool Edit Pro installed on it too and nearly invested in Adobe Audition for the 64 bit machine but that would have cost.  All I had to do was network them.  I can open anything on the Win 7 machine from the XP machine.  I can edit files and save them back to the 64 bit machine easily.
 
You dont have to turn it on all the time either just as you need it.  But you do need some sort of mixing system though to bring all the audio back into your mix. 
 
I have a third older Win 98 machine too which is also connected up to my system.  It runs perfectly and has many VST's and plug-ins on it that are nowhere else.  There are 26 virtual instruments on that machine.  I also have a 4th computer too.  An Apple laptop which is fast and powerful.  I have it in the system as well.  The 4 computers all on the same page is amazing and very powerful.  Between them they can handle huge and complex mixes yet none of them are actually working that hard.  I still only do all the sequencing on the main machine though.  I can send midi clock and MTC between them too and lock them up even but I don't do that though.
 
The result capacity of the 4 computers is way more powerful than the sum of the 4 machines.  I run Studio One and have V3 on the main machine but V2 32 bit installed on the XP machine. It is nice if you can organise the same program on both if you can.
 
The other good thing is that not only can the computers work together they can also split up and go their separate ways and do other jobs while you are working on your main machine.  eg remove noise from a long file etc.. or doing backup jobs etc.. It speeds things up.  One can be on line as well or have all your manuals on it too or training tutorials.  Much better to watch something on a separate machine and not take up any real-estate on your main monitor.
 
Don't throw them away. Connect them up and use them. Your system only gets way more powerful as a result.  You don't have to turn them on only when you need them.
 

Jeff , I enjoyed your post very much  
 
Kenny

I run Windows Home Server 2011 on mine. It does scheduled backups of my Studio PC as well as acting as my Web Server. But the backup is the best part.