Anybody else find a lot of fun tinkering with old or slow hardware?

[Potato*Salad]

Getting stuff to run, optimizing, finding ways to increase FPS in games etc, and then for whatever reason i enjoy gaming on that machine more than i do on a capable PC that has it all easy because it is faster.

Feel accomplished.

 

I finished Bioshock Infinite on a Radeon 4200 IGP.. and i went above and beyond optimizing it ...

 

 

 

[Potato*Salad]

There is a YouTuber who does it.

 

 

[Zodiark1593]

I have an Intel Atom tablet and a Pentium 2900J desktop (just a faster Atom) that I like messing with.

[Ertman]

There's a certain bit of excitement when on top of any gameplay or productivity when playing around with slower hardware.

[YedZed]

I love it.

[Pickstock]

Im trying to get some core 2 duo or xeon stuff up and running for a cheapy gaming rig sort of.

But i also managed to score some old VGA monitors that im going to try and build a multiple monitor rig for random stuff.

 

The older stuff is just great of messing with and not worrying about breaking.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i like doing that, but diffrently. i have a lot of computers from the late 90's. windows 95 and 98 machines. and i try and use really lightweight linux distro's on them and see what you can still do with a system of that age. and yes, optimizing games is a lot of fun. 

[IKnight]

I mostly just take them apart for the interesting parts. 

[lumacman]

just because its old or "slow" by modern standards does not mean its useless. you would be quite supprised what "old" hardware can do. 

https://www.pfsense.org/ turn your old systems into the best router you will ever have. 

http://wtware.com/ turn that old system into a thin work station if you have some sort of VM environment

 

 

 

 

[Inkz]

It can be fun, but if I can't get atleast 60fps on it I will only do it for really old games or nostalgia.

[Princess Luna]

I barely have time or patience to play the game what so ever, imagine on crappy setting because of old hardware lol

 

Nah thanks.

[mattyamy84]

yeah its fun and more problems which is more fun to solve. i building a Q6600 build with my 3 year old to teach her about pc's and its great becuase it dont really matter if she breaks anything as its all old hardware.  its good to do old builds just to build up general pc knowledge but sometimes finding them drivers and bios updates can be a nightmare

[Dom5201]

On 9/25/2017 at 7:54 PM, Potato*Salad said:

Getting stuff to run, optimizing, finding ways to increase FPS in games etc, and then for whatever reason i enjoy gaming on that machine more than i do on a capable PC that has it all easy because it is faster.

Feel accomplished.

 

I finished Bioshock Infinite on a Radeon 4200 IGP.. and i went above and beyond optimizing it ...

 

 

 

This is how I learned to build a PC as a kid

[Zodiark1593]

Tbh, I gamed a heck of a lot more on my old laptop with the Radeon 5470 graphics (that got a pretty massive overclock from 750 up to 900 MHz) than I ever have on my desktop I built later on. I hardly game at all anymore, which is partly why I haven't bothered upgrading the GTX 960. Sad to say, I could probably sell the card, run on iGPU, and not miss it 95% of the time.

[Drak3]

Old in what context?

Because I would have more fun making my own Apple II or ZX Spectrum than playing with a Core 2 Duo.

[Scitesh]

i like smelling old hardware (old corsair PSUs smell like shit)

[Pickstock]

4 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Old in what context?

Because I would have more fun making my own Apple II or ZX Spectrum than playing with a Core 2 Duo.

Isn't there people who are building their own 8 bit computer chips at home these days.

[ScratchCat]

On 9/26/2017 at 7:42 PM, lumacman said:

just because its old or "slow" by modern standards does not mean its useless. you would be quite supprised what "old" hardware can do. 

https://www.pfsense.org/ turn your old systems into the best router you will ever have. 

http://wtware.com/ turn that old system into a thin work station if you have some sort of VM environment

 

 

 

 

What if it is so old it doesnt have an ethernet connection

Definitely, the challenge of trying to get TES Morrowind on a raspberry pi or Civ 5 on a Bay Trail tablet.

[Jordan Johnson-Verburg]

On 9/25/2017 at 8:07 PM, valdyrgramr said:

I have a 6600 that sounds like a leafblower fighting a chainsaw.

I literally LOL'd at this.  I know your pain.

Any ways, I have this weird obsession with trying to make media center streaming PCs with the littlest hardware possible.  Whether it's a Pi, Pine64, or old atom thin client PCs.  The dream would be to also stream Steam with the older hardware but I have not had a playable experience yet with the old intel atom thin client I have with nvidia ion graphics haha.  Also want to incorporate having the LED backdrop setups like Lightpack which I have both a kickstarter version and a pre-kickstarter version sold off of ebay from the same Russian dude.  Since it screen scrapes and averages the color per screen cap box to designate color to the LED array while streaming content it can be quite intensive for lower powered systems which I have yet to find my perfect balance but Raspberry Pi 3 has done the best per dollar performance of all of these I've used so far.