Dumpster Diving

[niko7209]

So today in the parking lot of my apartment complex i saw someone carrying an old case to the dumpster. I said hey wait! i'll take that, dude. so i bring it home and heres the contents on first inspection:
3x hard drives, 4gb, and 2 2 gbs
floppy, cd, cdr
mobo, intel cpu, vga, and sound board, COVERED in dust.
[more details to follow, i have class soon]

my question is this:
is it possible to make this old piece of crap act as a network hub for me and my friend to play quake 3 and such on? what additional components would i need to make this happen? what operating system would/should i use?
-OR-
any other creative ideas for a busted old computer? the guy said its 6-8 years old.

EDIT:
the REAL contents of this junker are:
-30.0gb WD hd, 4311mb seagate hd, 9.1gb ibm hd
-diamond ??? vga (agp)
-soundblaster live!
-generic cdrom and hp cdr drive
-ABIT VP6 with TWO INTEL CPUS?! is this possible? how old is dual chip?
-I'll know everything for sure if/when i get it up and running

[Aero]

hmm cool. I want to go dumpster diving myself but can't with my car, a bit too, eerrr... unique.

Interesting Dual procesor. While dual processing (i.e.: hyperthreading) became popular with P4's I think there were a few P3's that used it, but I could be mistaken.

[Omega]

If you want a network hub, go out and spend the 30$ for a switch, yo. You'll spend way more than that getting enough network cards.


However, that's pretty awesome. I would say throw linux on it, make the case look nice, and have a bitchin' Linux rig.

[Omega]

If you want a network hub, go out and spend the 30$ for a switch, yo. You'll spend way more than that getting enough network cards.


However, that's pretty awesome. I would say throw linux on it, make the case look nice, and have a bitchin' Linux rig.

[tybrenis]

Double post huh?

[niko7209]

Omega -
How would I make this rig into a hub? Just by throwing 8 pci network cards into it? And how can linux help me in this endeavour? i've never used linux before.

Failing that, my plan is as follows. Buy a 40-50 buck network hub (switch?) and mount it into the case, using the power supply and a bunch of extra fans and maybe some heatsinks i have lying around to cool it. oh, and lots and lots of LEDs. Gotta have that.

[onelegout]

turn it into a server! 'twould be a great ftp/web/quake server! Run apache web server on linux.

[Omega]

Omega -
How would I make this rig into a hub? Just by throwing 8 pci network cards into it? And how can linux help me in this endeavour? i've never used linux before.

Failing that, my plan is as follows. Buy a 40-50 buck network hub (switch?) and mount it into the case, using the power supply and a bunch of extra fans and maybe some heatsinks i have lying around to cool it. oh, and lots and lots of LEDs. Gotta have that.

Well, you see, Buying 8 Ethernet (or gigabit) cards and optimizing it for useage like a switch would be much more costly in both money and time. And i just said linux because, well, it's free.

[Cevinzol]

your dumpster M/B is probably from an old server. Many servers used 2 or 4 proccessors (not dual core but full CPUs) to balance the load on them. That means you have the beginings of a usable file server.

As for a switch/hub.. go buy one it'll be cheaper.

[opengswede]

i agree with all of the above. a hub / switch is cheaper and easier. use the old crap as a server for something. And linux: well, it's free and have native support for dual / quad processors (at least the kernel). IE efficient and fairly easy to set up for dual processors.

Windows and old computers is a challenge, especially with > 1 processor. I remember hacking matlab code a couple of years back ( think more than 5) and the comp I used had dual processors. The funny thing was that, running matlab configured for 2 processors actually slowed the computing time down. I'm guessing that matlab didn't have good support for dual processors, meaning the time it took to divide the processing over two different cpu was more than it took to compute the thing in the first place.

i'll stop my rambling now.
-.erik