[ExI] homebrew cold freon bath super computer

[BillK]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 5:57 AM, spike wrote:
>  But it is making me nuts to think of processors going into the trash,
> when they could be salvaged perhaps and put to work doing something, even if
> useless.
>
>

I enjoy rebuilding old pcs, putting a lightweight Linux on them and
making them do useful stuff as well.

But nowadays it is not really worth spending the electricity on, if
you have a useful application in mind.

An old pc can be converted to act as a hardware router for your home
network. But why bother? You end up running a whole pc instead of a
little cheap Netgear box.

You can use an old pc as a database store for your network. But why
bother? The old disk drive is too small and you have to run another
pc. Instead you can have a little box external hard drive that holds a
terabyte of data, or use memory sticks for storage.
Anything you can make an old pc do can be done better and cheaper
using modern equipment. That's Moore's Law in action.

Pcs are so cheap and powerful now that old pcs are probably better
given to charities for refurbishing and sending to third world
villages.

Though I'll probably never need to buy another pc again for myself.
The 2 or 3 year old pcs that friends throw out do me just fine!  :)


BillK