Bring 2009 netbook back to life?

A

Anarchist86ed

New Member
I have an old HP Mini 110 netbook with windows XP still on it. Obviously I'm not going to attempt to take it online these days, that'd be suicidal. I want to use it as a retro gaming system, but to transfer everything by memory stick is a task I'd rather not undertake. I got an additional ram for cheap, so it's up to 2 gigs of ram, it's max. Now I want to swap out XP.

Let me be clear that I don't want to pay one more penny on an obsolete computer with limited capability so I'm not buying windows 10 or anything. I only bought ram because it was so cheap. About the price of two double cheeseburgers and large fries at McDonald's. So what are my options for replacing XP? I know it's old, but there has to be a good option to bring it back to life and online.

Here's the specs:

https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-mi...win-xp-home-1-gb-ram-160-gb-hdd-series/specs/
 
A

Anarchist86ed

New Member
Linux mint?

System requirements:
  • 512MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
  • 9GB of disk space (20GB recommended).
  • Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution (1024×768 recommended).
  • DVD drive or USB port.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
I'm not familiar with linux but a lot of people will recommend using it on old XP machines instead.
 
Agent Smith

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
SMH. You won't "die" using XP on the Internet. No offensive, but I think M$ has you and the scores of others brainwashed into thinking they must have the latest and greatest OS otherwise bad things will happen.

I use a Dell Mini 910 connected to an external keyboard/mouse and monitor that sits in the kitchen called the "kitchen kiosk." It has been on 24/7/365 for three years connected to the Internets and running Immunet as an anti-virus, hosting a teamspeak server and Phonetray which is part of my landline (don't say gross) phone connection that facilitates my phone firewall to block telemarketers etc. *takes breath* Finally, it's used to look up recipes and shit on the whelm. I do use Sandboxie for the browser Pale Moon. Although, Moonchild, the Dev of Pale Moon no longer makes or maintains the Atom version of PM for computers like these. But the Atom optimized PM is still available.

All in all they are a great little bastard. I want to buy another, install Kali and a USB WIFI card capable of packet injection and monitor mode to do some things. TEEHEE.


If you are that paranoid about XP, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux are your only bets. I have seen Win 7 on them though. I'm not sure how well a mini will work with 7 though. I was thinking it could be very sluggish. As if it they aren't already. Note that if you do decide to use it in a 24 hour 365 application, I would turn off the page file and use at minimum 2GB of RAM. I found that out the hard way. Good thing I cloned the drive to a USB stick. When I bought my new flash drive I cloned right back via USB and it was like nothing ever changed. I used AOMEI Backuper.

Another option is to use it for a SDR and tracking aircraft. Feed that data here:
https://global.adsbexchange.com/

I gotta say. One great thing about unfiltered ADS-B is that you can see FBI surveillance planes. I even watched Air Force One take off with Trump for the first time from NY to Washington. Although, that wasn't the 747. I think it's a 707 variant.

Still a very capable little computer. Endless possibilities. Gaming? Maybe pinball that comes with XP. I wouldn't even try to run Mario on these things. If you don't want it, sell it on eBay. They do sell for around $35-50.
 
Last edited:
A

Anarchist86ed

New Member
Agent Smith said:
SMH. You won't "die" using XP on the Internet. No offensive, but I think M$ has you and the scores of others brainwashed into thinking they must have the latest and greatest OS otherwise bad things will happen.

I use a Dell Mini 910 connected to an external keyboard/mouse and monitor that sits in the kitchen called the "kitchen kiosk." It has been on 24/7/365 for three years connected to the Internets and running Immunet as an anti-virus, hosting a teamspeak server and Phonetray which is part of my landline (don't say gross) phone connection that facilitates my phone firewall to block telemarketers etc. *takes breath* Finally, it's used to look up recipes and shit on the whelm. I do use Sandboxie for the browser Pale Moon. Although, Moonchild, the Dev of Pale Moon no longer makes or maintains the Atom version of PM for computers like these. But the Atom optimized PM is still available.

All in all they are a great little bastard. I want to buy another, install Kali and a USB WIFI card capable of packet injection and monitor mode to do some things. TEEHEE.


If you are that paranoid about XP, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux are your only bets. I have seen Win 7 on them though. I'm not sure how well a mini will work with 7 though. I was thinking it could be very sluggish. As if it they aren't already. Note that if you do decide to use it in a 24 hour 365 application, I would turn off the page file and use at minimum 2GB of RAM. I found that out the hard way. Good thing I cloned the drive to a USB stick. When I bought my new flash drive I cloned right back via USB and it was like nothing ever changed. I used AOMEI Backuper.

Another option is to use it for a SDR and tracking aircraft. Feed that data here:
https://global.adsbexchange.com/

I gotta say. One great thing about unfiltered ADS-B is that you can see FBI surveillance planes. I even watched Air Force One take off with Trump for the first time from NY to Washington. Although, that wasn't the 747. I think it's a 707 variant.

Still a very capable little computer. Endless possibilities. Gaming? Maybe pinball that comes with XP. I wouldn't even try to run Mario on these things. If you don't want it, sell it on eBay. They do sell for around $35-50.
Click to expand...

I can play tons of games on it. Max payne 1 and 2, vice city, san andreas runs fine. every rom I threw at it. FMV games. It's only use is retro gaming.
 
Agent Smith

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
I can hardly believe that. The GPU is not up to that task, especially the Atom-based CPU. I mean FFS. When I ran San Andreas on a Pentium 4 and flew around I would get serious lag just from the clouds. It would be 10x worse on a netbook.
 
Jiniix

Jiniix

Well-Known Member
I have a Packard Bell Dot, Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM and GMA 950, 1024x600 9" display. Real piece of turd, but chugs along nicely with an older LUbuntu distro.
No reason to use XP these days. Has more holes that a sieve or swiss cheese.
 
strollin

strollin

Well-Known Member
I had several of the Acer Aspire netbooks with 1.5GB of RAM that originally came with XP installed. I upgraded them to Win 8 and Win 10 and the netbooks ran better than they ever did with XP. "Modern" apps in Win 8 and 10 work actually pretty well on those old netbooks. They're definitely not speed demons but work perfectly well for web surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, etc...
 
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