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Topic: cheapest pc ever......

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roberts

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Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Aug. 31 2004,19:39

I am not afraid to admit that I fetched an old laptop from a trash bin.
An AMSTech 233Mhz -32MB ram - unbootable cdrom drive- no hard drive - built-in mouse broken - no floppy - no battery.

I put a 64MB compact flash with IDE adapter with DSL and an external mouse, with an old power supply brick. Runs fine. Even my pcmcia wireless card works! Great for testing the ultra low end machines. Only problem, it weights a ton!

I bring it out to show friends how low we can go and wireless too. Wish it was more portable.

SaidinUnleashed Offline

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Posts: 1428
Joined: Mar. 2004

Posted: Aug. 31 2004,20:30

oh roberts, i think i can beat that.

Hitachi 420CDS (with a sticker that says NEW!!! Lightning fast 4x CD-ROM!!!)
P1 99mhz
48mb of proprietary Hitachi RAM
originally had win95 on it, friend put win98SE demo edition on it.
HD was dead when i got it, cdrom is no worky
and 2 16bit pcmcia slots.

oh, and did i mention that the battery only lasts 20 mins on a full charge?
it was originally a 45 min battery, so it didn't deprieciate too bad.

had a spare 2gig 2.5 inch HDD layin around, installed DSL in it and hooked that little SOB up.

works like a charm. my friend had it with the trash to throw out, and now it's a decent little FTP server. makes me laugh.

-J.P.
SaidinUnleashed

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They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing, cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows.

Unleash the power of the TILDE~~~

cbagger01

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Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Aug. 31 2004,21:55

OK, how about this:

P1 60Mhz, 40MB RAM, poorman's install to a Win95 FAT16 partition, 80MB swap partition, Intel Etherexpress ISA NIC

A poorman's install with boot floppy is required because the boot floppy's kernel does not contain the special Mitsumi CDROM controller driver and even if I install it via "expert" mode the install scripts do not look to /dev/mcdx as a possible place for the KNOPPIX image file.

Have not tried Firefox because in DSL 0.4.9 the *.ci extension did not exist and 40MB of RAM is too small for the "Get Firefox" script.

However, Opera 6.12 will install into 40MB RAM and works fairly well for the machine, faster than Dillo or Glinks for rich web content. It definately beats the pants off of IE4 in Win95.

mikshaw

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Posts: 4856
Joined: July 2004

Posted: Aug. 31 2004,22:17

Quote (roberts @ Aug. 31 2004,15:39)

I am not afraid to admit that I fetched an old laptop from a trash bin.

That's how I did most of my shopping when I was living in the city =o)
It's amazing what people throw out...over the course of a summer I acquired a 486, p-133, p-200, and pII-333, plus various ram modules, 2 inkjet printers, and the 17" monitor that I still use today. Most of the stuff I left with my old roommate, but I still have the 333 sitting in a corner waiting to be put to some use. I think it has Slackware 8 on it at the moment...maybe I'll try out a harddrive DSL one of these days.

--------------
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

ke4nt1

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Posts: 2329
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Sep. 01 2004,02:30

I usually frequent "hamfest" for many bargains...
Lots of goodies to be found for next to nothing..
I picked up my last Abit dual-cpu board w/cpu's for $30.00
My last laptop was a 233MMX w/32MB p/s cdrom for $30.00

My best "find" so far is when the county courthouse was upgrading their systems..
I got 8 or so computers as a handout..
P133's w/32 MB ram, 4 MB hercules VGA, ISA NIC, floppy, cdrom, PS, AT style..
Unfortunately, the bioses have no option to boot from cdrom..

73
ke4nt

10 replies since Aug. 31 2004,05:15

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