What Do You Do With Old PCs?

I haven't created an application for an old computer, but I remember an article in a magazine long ago about this. Most such applications were called "drone" work, where the 'puter is used to control something in a routine manner, or in response to limited inputs. I remember one example listed was running the elevators in an apartment building. The computer was a Commodore 64. This was back in the days of the 286 or 386.

The only thing I could think of would be to do a shared processing thing. Network them together, and have a single master assign to each 'puter a slice of a larger job, kinda like what SETI did a few years back.

Nerds...

When I was actively selling engineering and manufacturing software, I frequently saw old generation Intel motherboards and third party clones in the control cabinets of CNC milling machines and lathes. I'm sure there were similar baords inside the guts of molding and stamping machines as well.

To the best of my recollection, there was never any incentive to upgrade those boards as they were quite capable of generating the tool paths, even for complex parts.

Though no longer active in that industry, I suspect that many of those machines continue to operate with motherboards developed in the 80's.

L.J.

Many CNC machines still use MS-DOS (some use Linux on old PCs) and the printer port as the interface......build yourself a CNC machine......its a lot of fun......

Hello World, Back from the Dead (factory move, and no Internet)

If you'd like to try a older system running a CNC under Linux, check out

http://www.linuxcnc.org/

Build a Juke box for your music. Small touch screen is nice or just a numeric input pad and a display to pick from. You can even set up play lists for each person in your home or random playing from specific lists. Integrate it into your stereo and Presto!

My inclinations flow along side Del's

I wanted to use solar, temperature, wind data, to then control my "environmentals".

I was pretty sure that even in a poorly built American tract home, if you had enough time to run from room to room opening, closing and adjusting...

Now combine that with the unique properties of the southwest (low humidity - high heat) and decide whether the humidity was appropriate for evaporative or freon cooling

Then start moving into sun shading not just over windows but walls - all with the goal of reducing heating and cooling loads.

Mostly what I discovered was that data collection (A/D to PC) was kind of expensive either in time or materials, actuation was expensive, and most heating/cooling contractors were going to run away and put your name on the Do Not Answer Calls list.

Hi edignan, I too think that the hardware to control temperatures, doors, levels and whatever controller one can think of, is too expensive for my wallet anyway. And to complicated to write programs, that works, and the power used for simple tasks is way over, what is needed.

I gave you a GA for that statement.

I use the oldest computers as a resource of small DC motors from 3,5" floppydrives and CD-drives, and bearings from old HDs, the PSU can be used as powersupply for mobile cooling boxes, as the 12 V DC is in the 5-8 A range and is a switched mode type with high efficiency. I used an old PC fan to cool my subwooferamp, as it was put into a drawer, adding a simpel thermostat made of a NTC and a couple of transistors, keeping temps around 35 deg. C, and slowing the fan down making less noise when the amp is not working hard.

I ran across an Athlon 600Mhz making internet and music accessible in my kitchen, also viewing recorded television from the media center in the living room.

About controlling temps for solar heater and tracking sun devices, I find they are best as stand alone, simpel analog circuits, and using the old PC PSU for 12 V DC supply and yet powerful enough to work actuators, and 5 V DC when using logic. I am testing a 2 m2 solar heater for a small house in the garden, I'm learning a lot from the "wild" ideas I try to get to function, like suntracking and the actuator made from scrap: old elevation office-desk, with gearbox from defect hotlaminator and the DC motor from the floppydrive, endstopcontacts from old recordplayer, I could go on. But its fun, and I set a personal 50 deg. C record in the 100 L plastic tank, after a long day with sun. Efficiency is the key word, very hard to accomplish, especially when everything is made from scrap. The tank is not insulated btw, just testing for now.

Well, it got longer that I intended, sorry....

Regards moe

We ran many manufacturing tools with 286's and 386's as their brain. find some compatible I/O boards and automate to your hearts desire.

Music, audio visual, security system, intercom, voice recognition, water your yard, build a five axis EDM, a Beowulf cluster spaceship flight simulator. If you can imagine it chances are you can build it.

keep us updated

Brad

Found a site once (since lost the reference) where a heliostat setup was controlled by an old 286 processor.

All it had to do was keep the mirrors approximately pointing at the sun during the day, then return to starting point ready to start tracking next day.

For fun he apparently also set it up to track and focus moonshine (not THAT type! ). Don't think he got much energy out of it though.

I either donate them to a not-for-profit or take them to recycle day.

Of course, stingy bastard that I am, I haven't bought a new monitor in about 10 years.

As far as controlling things; my mother in law refuses to wear the electrodes so I'm still stuck with that.

Contact your local recycling/landfill....sounds like the best thing for you

I am after an old 386/486 computer at 20 MHz actually, with a VGA graphics output.

I found a copy of my old pc-speaker voice synth "Tran.exe" and can't wait to use it again. I need an old slow computer, otherwise the program just mumbbles through the pc-speaker.

I used a 70h timer pc-speed slowing software but did not improve the situation, as the slowing down routines made the synth produce a chopped up sound.

I expect a 08h timer based program to do the same. The only thing that could same me is an old PC.

Maybe I need to look for a CNC machine then!!!!

Put them on EBay if they have things of demand. I just purchased 6 motherboards that had ISA slots. our motion controllers have ISA boards. At $7,000.00 and up for new x y system, used boards / computers are a steal!

Build desks; two stacked mid-towers are about the right height to support a desktop two each side or four to a side for a table/bench or fill the cases with expanding and build a shed.

The cases are good boxes for routing cables, patch bays, power supplies, home theater, security and lighting.

You can use an old computer as a controller. You have, through the printer port (the old one, with no bidirectional data) eight bits of data going out and four bits of data going in. Also there are few bits available for commands - direction out. I was able to do some addressing, commands to get eight bits of data (in two four bits nibbles), as well as other commands to a temperature monitoring system.

The programming was pretty simple, in C. Thus, if you do not have many commands to use or if the data you want to acquire is converted digitally, all you need is an old computer.