[ale] pls sanity check my article

[David S. Jackson]

I would be much obliged if you could give my article a sanity
check for accuracy.  It's entitled "20 Old Hardware uses for Linux
Geeks."  I'm not too sure about the processor requirements on
some of these tasks, and I have stipulated that you need 486 or
lower-end pentium for them, but if you find any of the article
misleading, please let me know.

Thanks!

--
David S. Jackson                        dsj at dsj.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Here's something to think about:  How come you never
see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery'?" -- Jay Leno






              20 Old Hardware Uses for Linux Geeks


   To put things in perspective, we landed vehicles on the moon using

1960's technology. A Commodore VIC 20 would have been a marvel to the

technology of that day. So, when you hear yourself saying, "What can I do

with this old 486 or Pentium 200?", just remember this. Assuming you can

figure out how to use Category 5 networking cable in your home, you could

delegate many everyday functions to other boxes on your network, thus

reducing the load on your everyday computer as well as giving new vitality

to your so called "worn out" computers. Here are twenty purposes you can

assign to "old" computers that will suit a 486 or early pentium class

architecture:


  1. Internal router or gateway. As you acquire more "old hardware" or

     find yourself increasingly connected to the Internet (with Cable or

     DSL), you should think about segmenting your home network. You

     might be using one of the many off-the-shelf home routers, and those

     might satisfy your needs for now, but eventually you should think

     about dividing your home network into "public" and "private"

     segments. You could easily use a very humble old computer with two

     network cards to accomplish this.


  2. Fax/Print server.


  3. Telephone messaging device. Needs a voice modem.


  4. E-mail server. This is perhaps the heaviest and

     most-required network service in use; you could easily delegate this

     task to an old computer.


  5. Small database server. With the numerous free databases available,

     you could easily move this service to a dedicated box, and export the

     results either via http or NFS or via the databases own protocol.


  6. MP3 server/player or NAP server. Since MP3s require some CPU

     cycles for decoding MP3s, yet not an inordinate amount, you could let

     an old pentium computer do this all by itself. This can additionally

     connect to your stereo system and play your playlists that way. You

     could alternatively use an old 486 to serve filesystems of MP3s to

     local clients instead of trying to decode them. With a larger hard



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    drive (and a not-so-old pentium processor), you could also build a

    dedicated Nap server.


 7. Nostalgic gaming machine. Sometimes you don't want to clutter up

    your desktop machine with games or other distractions. But you

    could easily run one of the old Atari or Commodore emulators and

    run terrific old games built for those platforms. They are still around,

    and the old games work great.


 8. Dial-in server for you and your friends. You too could be a small-time

    Internet service provider. Or you could provide yourself dial-in service

    when you are on the road with your laptop. (It helps if your home

    network is connected with high a bandwidth connection.) This will

    require some security consciousness on your part, since others could

    connect to your dial-in server.


 9. Small or specialized webserver. If you just want to serve up home

    pages for your family, or if you have modest amounts of content to a

    small number of people, a web server could fairly easily run on an

    older computer. A specialized database of MP3s could be served up

    to your local family members, or you might host your recipe database

    to the outside world. Again, if you're sharing with the outside world,

    think security.


10. Fileserver. Some directory hierarchies might be better exported from

    a central source to reduce redundency on other machines on your

    network. For example, you could mount /usr/local from a central

    server, or /usr/share or something like that. It's not always necessary

    to duplicate these files from machine to machines, assuming you're

    running the same operating system between them. (If not, you could

    export /usr/share/debian and mount it as /usr/share on your debian

    machine, export /usr/share/freebsd and mount it on all your

    FreeBSD machines, and so forth.)


11. Experimental workstation. Ever wanted to run OS/2 Warp? Minix?

    Run old DOS applications? Dedicated your machine for compiling

    source code? CPM? Do development for your Palm Pilot? Program

    assembly language? You could reserve an older machine for just such

    a thing. I have an old 486 that happily runs OS/2 Warp that I still

    get a kick out of using.



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 12. Intrusion detection device. I haven't seen any off-the-shell home

     network gateways that adequately provide intrusion detection. You

     could place some intrusion detection software on an old 486 that

     actually lets you know when or if the bad guys get into your home

     network.


 13. Network time server. Synchronize all your network boxes to a single

     computer whose sole purpose in life is to tell the correct time.


 14. Distributed network client machine. Use your old 486 to donate CPU

     cycles to any of a number of worthwhile projects, such as searching

     for extraterrestrial life or cracking cryptographic keys.


 15. Dedicated website mirror. Keep a local mirror handy of your favorite

     websites.


 16. Dedicated smalltime news server. Like to follow a few newsgroups but

     get tired of expired articles? Run your own newserver. Watch out,

     this can eat disk space galore if you're not careful.


 17. DNS Server. Though DNS can get wildly complicated, it's not too

     bad on smaller networks. It's a security risk, so be careful with this

     one. Using your own DNS server can give your network a lot of added

     flexibility when that becomes important to you.


 18. Voice Over IP Terminal. It's possible to use one of your boxes as a

     telephone terminal, replacing a telephone to talk with others over the

     Internet instead of using your phone. There are some tricks and traps

     you can learn about in the VoIP-HOWTO at linuxdoc.org.


 19. Dedicated MP3 Burner. You won't gain much in speed by using an

     older machine for this. In fact, an older machine may cause problems.

     But, assuming your extra machine is up to the task, you can take the

     load of this task off your primary workstation so it won't interfere

     with your other work.


 20. Combination server. Combine some reasonable number of the above

     functions in a single server on your network.


   These ideas can actually be projects in their own right. Older hardware,

sometimes combined with larger hard drives or specialized devices on PCI



                                   3




or ISA slots, should suffice, except where processor intensive routines are

required, as with encoding and decoding compressed media or with

compressing and decompressing files. Database and webserver applications,

for example, that rely heavily on the processor should be avoided on older

hardware. In other words, keep it simple.

   Oh, and if you're using relatively new hardware, there are many other

uses you could consider: streaming media server, digital VCR, ultimate

gaming machine, archival back-up server, video conferencing station, large

development machine for compiling sources, and, of course, a dedicated

Quake server!



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