What to do.. need ideas

[Kraven]

Cleaned up the shop last night. Dusted off a Dell 780 slim desktop and 3 dual core laptops.

Any cool ideas of what I can do w/ these?

Cheers, K

 

[harshness]

Core Duo machines are suitable for Linux, but not much else. Consider donating them. RAM constraints are going to be a real problem with any of them for running pretty much any recent version of Windows and its obscenely bloated .net-dependent packages.

 

[Kraven]

I was thinking of installing Mint on one and using it as a media server for the home network.
Ideally I'd block it from accessing the internet yet be able to connect to it to transfer/delete media.

Possible?

 

[harshness]

I was thinking of installing Mint on one and using it as a media server for the home network.

That depends on how much transcoding that your DLNA players require and what kind of graphics hardware the computer has. The wimpier your clients are in terms of CODEC handling, the more important that the computer be modern.

Ideally I'd block it from accessing the internet yet be able to connect to it to transfer/delete media.

Air gap is probably unnecessary roughness. Unless you set up port forwarding, it wouldn't be next to impossible to access it from the Internet. The real danger is Wi-fi on the LAN side. Linux (especially Mint) likes being able to update as necessary.

If you are going to run something like Plex, I'd suggest a minimal Debian system and forego a GUI (desktop) altogether . The Plex interface is all browser-based and runs just fine remotely. The Debian distribution includes a version of Plex that can be installed with any of the Debian package managers.

 

[Kraven]

Well the last 2/3 of that flew right over my head..

 

[harshness]

Well the last 2/3 of that flew right over my head..

Keep researching until it sinks in. Media servers are cool, but you have to factor in several key aspects or the experience won't be as rewarding as it could be.

It is also useful to understand what won't impact the experience.

BTW, I meant to say that access from the Internet WOULD be next to impossible unless you went out of your way to make it so.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Well the last 2/3 of that flew right over my head..

Yeah, me too....

 

[Comptech]

Get yourself a SDR dongle and hook it up to one. Perfect machine for software defined radio.

 

[harshness]

Get yourself a SDR dongle and hook it up to one. Perfect machine for software defined radio.

What's the point of using a computer when you can use a conventional radio? I suppose if you don't already have a scanner, SDR could be interesting and it is certainly cheap to get into it that way but it does take some horsepower.

 

[Comptech]

What's the point of using a computer when you can use a conventional radio? I suppose if you don't already have a scanner, SDR could be interesting and it is certainly cheap to get into it that way but it does take some horsepower.

A few things. first with some freeware you can decode many formats that radios can't, easy to record a channel, and a waterfall to search out signals. There are many more reasons, but that should give you a idea.

 

[harshness]

first with some freeware you can decode many formats that radios can't, easy to record a channel, and a waterfall to search out signals.

While creating an oversized scanner is a possible use, it doesn't seem in the same spirit as a media server. With some of the more exotic schemes, I'm not sure a dual-core is up to the task.