2 XP computers, what to do?

[da na]

I was lucky enough to find 2 XP machines for free, a Pentium 4 HT Compaq and an Athlon XP on an MSI board. What should I do with them? Is it worth reinstalling XP, buying upgrade cards, selling them? Or should I just chuck a Lububtu distro on them? I believe the p4 HT is hyper threaded. So 2 cores at 3.5 ghz AFAIK. Both seem to work normally, just very slow HDDs and are passcode locked BIOS and OS.

[Obese_Rice]

You could try to flip them. 

 

[8tg]

We’re at the point where they won’t even be close to usable with anything modern. These aren’t machines even capable of basic web browsing anymore.

Your best bet is to spec them up and sell them as “retro” gaming machines, load windows 98SE or 2K on them, fill them full of notable games and sell them for cheap.

 

[adarw]

4 minutes ago, TeraBitz said:

You could try to flip them. 

 

there isnt much he could flip... there in the end xp machines

[adarw]

2 minutes ago, 8tg said:

These aren’t machines even capable of basic web browsing anymore.

ive seen people make their user agent default websites for the phone version since they have less boltware. on very old pcs.

[Whispre]

recycle them.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, 8tg said:

We’re at the point where they won’t even be close to usable with anything modern. These aren’t machines even capable of basic web browsing anymore.

Your best bet is to spec them up and sell them as “retro” gaming machines, load windows 98SE or 2K on them, fill them full of notable games and sell them for cheap.

 

Argument here: that Pentium 4 outperforms many Windows 10S laptops and 99% of Chromebooks. If I put a light Linux distro on there… would it work well with Kodi/LibreElec as a HTPC sort of thing? It’s got a DVD drive so it could replace the DVD player and I wouldn’t have to bring my laptop to the tv every time my family wants to stream a movie…

[adarw]

Just now, Whispre said:

recycle them.

the point is we want to give them another life... why recycle.

[da na]

1 minute ago, Whispre said:

recycle them.

I saved them from recycling.

Not gonna put em back.

[adarw]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

Argument here: that Pentium 4 outperforms many Windows 10S laptops and 99% of Chromebooks. If I put a light Linux distro on there… would it work well with Kodi/LibreElec as a HTPC sort of thing? It’s got a DVD drive so it could replace the DVD player and I wouldn’t have to bring my laptop to the tv every time my family wants to stream a movie…

i would get a ssd. and make it do less sound with the fans.

[da na]

Just now, adarw said:

the point is we want to give them another life... why recycle.

Yep. I felt bad for them sitting in the storage shed, they probably wouldn’t have survived today’s rainstorms (blowing literally sideways rain) if I hadn’t gotten them this morning.

[da na]

Just now, adarw said:

i would get a ssd. and make it do less sound with the fans.

I’ve got a 64gb ssd and some Noctuas. Will do!

those P4 systems ran hella hot though, it’s got 5 fans in a SFF case… if that gives you any ide

[8tg]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

Argument here: that Pentium 4 outperforms many Windows 10S laptops and 99% of Chromebooks. If I put a light Linux distro on there… would it work well with Kodi/LibreElec as a HTPC sort of thing? It’s got a DVD drive so it could replace the DVD player and I wouldn’t have to bring my laptop to the tv every time my family wants to stream a movie…

Maybe if it was 2014 still but no, any remotely modern cheap laptop would stomp a Pentium 4 HT. Along with memory and drive limitations, the capabilities are significantly less than you may think they are.

Hell, a current ULV celeron would make any P4 or Athlon XP look like a toaster.

 

[da na]

1 minute ago, 8tg said:

Maybe if it was 2014 still but no, any remotely modern cheap laptop would stomp a Pentium 4 HT. Along with memory and drive limitations, the capabilities are significantly less than you may think they are.

Hell, a current ULV celeron would make any P4 or Athlon XP look like a toaster.

 

They still make and sell Celeron N4020 laptops which trade blows with that Pentium. But I guess that would be like a 4 year old fighting a half paralyzed 90 year old man. And yeah, only 2gb of RAM is a bit of a limiting factor (as is the ide hdd - can’t use my ssd, would have to use a cf card…)

[Zodiark1593]

5 hours ago, 8tg said:

Maybe if it was 2014 still but no, any remotely modern cheap laptop would stomp a Pentium 4 HT. Along with memory and drive limitations, the capabilities are significantly less than you may think they are.

Hell, a current ULV celeron would make any P4 or Athlon XP look like a toaster.

 

Phones from several years ago will run very many rings around Netburst. 

[Mark Kaine]

Play NFS Underground all day until you have all the parts. 

 

Also install Vista on the AMD... you can control the whole thing with an Xbox controller,  its fantastic! The Xbox home button enables the 'blades' an early form of the Sony 'XMB'.

 

The future! (until it wasn't lol)

[tkitch]

18 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Argument here: that Pentium 4 outperforms many Windows 10S laptops and 99% of Chromebooks. If I put a light Linux distro on there… would it work well with Kodi/LibreElec as a HTPC sort of thing? It’s got a DVD drive so it could replace the DVD player and I wouldn’t have to bring my laptop to the tv every time my family wants to stream a movie…

No it won't.

That's a single core with 2 threads.  That's gonna run like crap today.    If you want a DVD player?  They're less than 30 bucks.

[tkitch]

No, they're not worth the effort to do anything with.

 

It's going to be DDR 1 memory, which you can't find easily anymore, and the DIMMs then were small.  1GB was a REALLY BIG stick back then.

 

The money you'd spend upgrading them to be even somewhat functional would buy you a cheap PC today that would be waaaay faster.  (A 6th gen i5 refurb business PC can be had for a bit over 100 bucks on ebay, and will be ready to run out of the box.)

 

They're e-waste, unless the MSI board is a good one?  Then maybe a retro-builder would want it for a build.  

[Helpful Tech Witch]

18 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Argument here: that Pentium 4 outperforms many Windows 10S laptops and 99% of Chromebooks.

Ha!
No.

The fastest pentium 4 that could be, the 661, 188mil transistors. has ddr2, and a really old arcitecture.

My crappy school chromebook? Celeron N4000 2c2t at 1.10base 2.10 burst. 190mil transistors, runs with ddr4, has enough arcetectural changes to make it seem like its 20p4s.

Its not better.

and like 10% of chromebooks run with core series cpus, even i3 4th gen cpus will beat a pentium 4

[Helpful Tech Witch]

9 minutes ago, tkitch said:

It's going to be DDR 1 memory, which you can't find easily anymore, and the DIMMs then were small.  1GB was a REALLY BIG stick back then.

unless im mistaken, some 775 boards have ddr2 support and pentium support

[whm1974]

IMHO 32 bit Systems are not worth trying to reuse for anything.

[JZStudios]

[da na]

8 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Again, not going back to the recycling... 

[David_ballard]

flip them I do that for a living and I am only 15 it works great

 

[da na]

Just now, David_ballard said:

flip them I do that for a living and I am only 15 it works great

 

I do that with newer computers. However no one would use these as daily use machines.