[K12OSN] Pentium I and II still useful?

[Doug Simpson]

Pentuim I and II?

That's funny!

I still use 486's for terminals sometimes at my house for the
grandyounguns! If you find one that will work with 64MB RAM, they work
surprisingly well for terminals for the types of things younger kids
can/like to do. . .

They are getting dated, though!

DS


Doug Simpson
Technology Specialist
De Queen Public Schools
De Queen, AR
simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
"A Dollar Saved is a Dollar Earned"


>>> "Terrell Prudé Jr." <microman at cmosnetworks.com> 7/12/2008 10:25 AM
>>>
Dan Bretherton wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I recently acquired two old computers that would make ideal diskless
terminals 
> for a school or community computer lab.  One is a Pentium and the
other a 
> Pentium II.  I set up three small LTSP based labs in Guyana between
2003 and 
> 2005, and when I left donated Pentium class computers were still
being 
> shipped to developing countries by organisations such as Computer Aid

> International and the World Computer Exchange.  Three years later,
and now 
> back in the UK, I have discovered that the minimum specification that

> computer refurbishment charities will accept is Pentium III.  This
may be 
> because there are so many PIII and above PCs being donated that these

> organisations don't have the resources to deal with the lower specs
any more.  
> However, I am still hoping to find a home for my Pentium I and II,
and it 
> occurred to me that the UK LTSP community would be a good place to
start.  
> Please let me know if these computers would be useful to you or your

> organisation.  I live in Reading and regularly visit East Devon, and
I would 
> be happy to drive a reasonable distance from either of those
locations to 
> drop them off.

I'm in the US, and I've set up entire labs with Pentium I's and
Pentium
II's.  They work great as LTSP terminals.  I'm using an AMD K6-2 right
now in my home, and my Pentium I (home-built) and Pentium II (Dell
OptiPlex GX1) terminals are still rockin' and rollin'.  The only
modification I've had to make was drop in either an ATI Radeon 7500 or
a
Matrox Millenium G400 in them (they were cheap and available), and I
can
do full screen video w/ no problem.

Computer refurbishment charities aren't thinking LTSP.  They're
thinking
stand-alone box for someone's home, and for that scenario, they're
right; PIII's with 512MB DRAM really are the minimum for any modern OS.

A friend of mine is running Ubuntu Hardy on her PIII 700MHz laptop
with
576MB, and she's happy.  But I wouldn't put it on anything any smaller
than that.

--TP

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
K12OSN at redhat.com 
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn 
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>