How do I make the most of these old computers?

Z

zmatser

New Member
I have a Dell Dimension 8100 and a Dell Dimension 2400 (both currently XP)

The 2400 has the better processor and RAM, with Intel Pentium 4, 3.06GHz and 1Gb RAM.

Obviously I can take the Hard drive from the 8100 and add it to the 2400, but is there anything more I can do?

I can afford to spend a bit on this - but cant see it worth spending much. I have taken a look at the RAM in both, and even if they are compatible, the 2400 has no spare slots. Is there a way to create spare slots and add those from the 8100?

Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks
(I am also thinking of removing windows and installing Linux)
 
No, you can't add memory slots to the 2400. The 2400 and the 8100 take 2 different types of memory.. the 2400 takes DDR memory and the 8100 takes rdram memory which is not made anymore. They are not comaptible so don't try and put one in the other or vice versa. The 2400 has a max memory of 2gb and if you plan on running XP, that will work just fine. The only thing you can do is get more memory for the 2400, 2 sticks of 1gb.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145579

But frankly if you are wanting a better machine, I would save your money and find something that at least uses ddr2 memory
 
zmatser said:
I have a Dell Dimension 8100 and a Dell Dimension 2400 (both currently XP)

The 2400 has the better processor and RAM, with Intel Pentium 4, 3.06GHz and 1Gb RAM.

Obviously I can take the Hard drive from the 8100 and add it to the 2400, but is there anything more I can do?

I can afford to spend a bit on this - but cant see it worth spending much. I have taken a look at the RAM in both, and even if they are compatible, the 2400 has no spare slots. Is there a way to create spare slots and add those from the 8100?

Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks
(I am also thinking of removing windows and installing Linux)
Click to expand...

just reinstall linux. I don't even see the point of spend a penny on these.
 
Me....its a good candidate for a wipe and use for credit cards and business on the internet. Paying bills or what ever. I have the net book. Its paying bills etc. I do not check email or allowed here. Its business only. Do a wipe one time and call it a day.
 
actually there is a way in xp i saw that allows you to change the properties on a usb slot with a flash-drive in it so that it can use it as ram bassicaly, or the pagefile i guess, and on those it'd probably be the same speed or faster.
 
Are you talking about Readyboost? That's only available on Vista and 7, and its just a disk cache, not RAM. You won't see a difference if you adds another stick of RAM.
 
Readyboost is a gimmick unless you have a really fast USB3.0 device to use it with. Even then it's slower in latency than RAM.
 
There are many things you can use an older machine such as those for-- file servers, for one, firewall appliance is another.

I haven't kept up on the folding@home scene, so I don't know whether those machines would be good for a folding farm or not, but I'm sure there are some distributed-computing applications they would still be useful for.
 
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