[ale] Donated computers

[Jeff Hubbs]

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> My kids' daycare was donated about 8+ computers.  Apparently my wife
> volunteered me to take a look.  Today I looked.  It appears all of these
> machines are Dell Dimension XPS D333 computers.  The have all the normal
> features but are PII-333 adn 128m of memory.  Where it counts they seem
> to be lacking.  IMO these computers would make nice boat anchors since
> they are heavy and can grab mud easily.  
>
> My thought is that these computers feel like circa 1998 machines.  I
> could treat them as such.  They could load Win98 on them and then find
> educational software from around that time that is compatible and run
> that.  As long as the machine is good they will be in good shape.
>   
You'd have them buy Win98 licenses, first supposing that they're even
available for sale (which they almost certainly are not)?  You know, you
can't just take some Win98 CD you found and install it on even one of
those machines legally, much less all eight.  If you went ahead and did
it, you're giving that daycare a BSA poison pill!
> I wanted to try the educational version of Ubuntu but that would just
> require too much memory and CPU.  Even trying to find and get memory for
> these systems would be a pain.
>   
You already have RAM; you may have to scrap one machine to get it.
> I wish that when people would donate computers they would at least try
> to donate something they would find worthy for them self.  Don't donate
> the stuff you consider trash.  I know there is a parable that talks
> about this.....

If the machines still had value to the donor, they'd still be using
them.  The reality is that they're self-limited to the Microsoftian
"bargain" that maintains that such machines are flatly ineligible to run
current versions of operating system software.

In Linux-land, of course, that's a load of crap.  Others have suggested
that some LTSP variant be used; that's certainly a reasonable
suggestion.  However, without any network plant, that's a non-starter. 

If you wanted to add cables and a switch and do an LTSP rig, here's a
way that you might go about it.  Use RAM and disks from one or more of
the machines and add them to one of the machines to make a server - put
two drives in it, one per controller.  Pull or at least disconnect the
drives from the others.  Use the server's drives either as RAID  or just
to get  things (e.g., swap) separated.