Pentium II 266MHz - Runs like a champ!

deanj20

deanj20

New Member
I got a pile of junked computers for free a while back from a customer. I've been fixing them up and selling them on Craigslist in my spare time.

This morning I came across an old Acer box - Pentium II@266MHz with 32MB RAM running Windows 95! I put 128MB in it, and installed Windows 2000 SP4. After I got it all patched up (disabled unneeded services, changed VRAM size, etc etc), I put StarDock Objectdock on it and installed Firefox and stripped it down using some "about:config" edits.

I was blown away. This little thing runs faster and looks nicer than some Windows 7 PCs I've worked on!!! Of course, it's because they have 482 unnecessary processes running on startup, a bazillion registry errors, and shot through with malware... but still, I was impressed!

Anyway, that's all. Just wanted to share my little feat of the day! :D :D :D

(Here's the ad: http://corpuschristi.craigslist.org/sys/1880513526.html)
 
G25r8cer

G25r8cer

Active Member
Yup its amazing how well "slow" and "old" computers can run with a properly maintained and stripped down OS. Any computer no matter what the specs can run only as Fast or Slow as the OS that is on it. Make the OS faster by getting rid of bloatware and you will have a great little machine. This is why I think working on older machines is so much fun.
 
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Binkstir

New Member
Yeah, you're right,
I bought over 100 dell gx150s on auction from a high school which was two pallets of computers stacked 4 foot high. Since they have the original coa, I've been loading 2000 on them and firefox (you need firefox for adobe flash as ie6 wont run it) and they sell like hotcakes on craigslist for $50 each. With a cable connection they will surf the web with the best of them. My stack of gx150s is dwindling quickly.

This is the picture I use for my ad and tell them it's for the tower only.

dell001_005.jpg






binkstir
 
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lucasbytegenius

lucasbytegenius

Well-Known Member
Too bad Ubuntu has trouble with the sleep function on older computers. Why it only supports S3 mode (as far as I know) I will never know. Heard of a script called Quirk to fix it, but that site went down a few months back and lost all their files.
 
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iGeekOFComedy

New Member
I want to buy older computers/ find them for the cheap 50 or less with enough capabilities to browse the web and type because i'm doing a low budget video production. It's amazing. On eBay you find phones for around 20 euro. The v3 motorola is excellent quality + price ATM.
 
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iGeekOFComedy

New Member
deanj20 said:
I've got one sitting on the night stand - I can't get rid of it for $5 on Craigslist... bad battery though...
Click to expand...

hmm... Ill buy it for 5 bucks with shipping to ireland :p Is it just a bad battery? IS it locked to a network? Does everything else works beside the battery?
 
Shane

Shane

Super Moderator
Staff member
I love these older machines,Its a shame some people just throw them out.

I remember my old white box with a VIA Cyrix II Processor,iirc it had windows 95...then i had a Pentium 2 400Mhz with Windows 98 SE and 2000 Pro installed...that was wicked.

I still think to this day that Windows 2000 Pro is the best OS ive ever used in terms or reliability.
 
deanj20

deanj20

New Member
http://www.computerforum.com/members/76035-igeekofcomedy.htmliGeekOFComedy,

If you want it, send me an email with your address so I can calculate shipping. I'll reply with the price. Then you can send me a money order for that amount, and when I get it, I'll send the phone. (I don't have Paypal since I've closed my bank account... :()
Here's some pictures of the phone: http://jeremydean.co.nr/temp/Razr.jpg

AFAIK, it works fine, just needs a new battery. It has a slot for a SIM card, but I don't know whether it's locked to Cingular or not...

Let me know: [email protected]
 
deanj20

deanj20

New Member
Binkstir,

Those things look they'd run XP without a problem - why are you opting for the no-longer-supported Win2K?

Nevakonaza,

I know! I just put the same image I had on the 266MHz on a 347MHz w/ 196MB RAM - I mean, it's like a brand new computer! And that Objectdock makes the interface so sexy, I could pass it off for a Windows 7 machine to someone who didn't know the difference! MS Word 2003 loads in less than a second. It takes my modded Firefox a few seconds to load, but once it's up it runs as smooth as default Firefox does on my 2.8GHz 1GB RAM machine! I guess there are just so little processes running in the background on Win2K that it's able to fully dedicate the resources to applications. I'm still just blow away though...

I put a video up on my website for download if you want to check it out: http://jeremydean.co.nr/temp/oldButFast.mp4
 
S

sometechieguy

New Member
Yup its amazing how well "slow" and "old" computers can run with a properly maintained and stripped down OS. Any computer no matter what the specs can run only as Fast or Slow as the OS that is on it. Make the OS faster by getting rid of bloatware and you will have a great little machine. This is why I think working on older machines is so much fun.
Click to expand...

I always wanted to try NetBSD on the Sega Dreamcast for just that reason.
I did have an old Compaq Armada laptop (p120, 80 megs of ram, 2 gig drive) running mandrake and redhat at various times. It was so slow with KDE or GNOME but then I tried a minimalistic window manager called Blackbox and suddenly I had an efficient machine for web development at the time.
 
deanj20

deanj20

New Member
I like Fluxbox for Resource-starved *nix boxes... XFCE flies on my 1.8GHz/1GB RAM box... KDE even stalled on this thing (Slackware 13.0 Server)... but meh - KDE is friggin bloated...
 
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Binkstir

New Member
Deandj20
Those things look they'd run XP without a problem - why are you opting for the no-longer-supported Win2K?
Click to expand...

Yeah, they run xp no problem, but they have coa's for 2000, so that os doesn't cost me anything.
I'd have to buy and then charge another $90 put anthing else on it and I don't think I could make my money back.
Don't I wish I had a bunch of xp laying around! :)
 
zombine210

zombine210

New Member
deanj20 said:
I got a pile of junked computers for free a while back from a customer. I've been fixing them up and selling them on Craigslist in my spare time.

This morning I came across an old Acer box - Pentium II@266MHz with 32MB RAM running Windows 95! I put 128MB in it, and installed Windows 2000 SP4. After I got it all patched up (disabled unneeded services, changed VRAM size, etc etc), I put StarDock Objectdock on it and installed Firefox and stripped it down using some "about:config" edits.

I was blown away. This little thing runs faster and looks nicer than some Windows 7 PCs I've worked on!!! Of course, it's because they have 482 unnecessary processes running on startup, a bazillion registry errors, and shot through with malware... but still, I was impressed!

Anyway, that's all. Just wanted to share my little feat of the day! :D :D :D

(Here's the ad: http://corpuschristi.craigslist.org/sys/1880513526.html)
Click to expand...

what's up man, long time no read!
that machine looks nice :D i didn't know w2k could look so good! congrats!

i just checked and i still have my old 233mhz cpu around :D lol
let us know if you manage to get those 40 bux for it, i just might throw something like that together to get rid of it. :good:

why didn't you put some linux on it? just wondering.
 
deanj20

deanj20

New Member
Hey zombine!!! Yeah, been busy... and after you read the same questions day after day, you kind of start to lose interest in the site... I've been trying to make a comeback though! :D

zombine210 said:
why didn't you put some linux on it? just wondering.
Click to expand...

Because I want to sale the computer!!! The average user has a hard enough time using Windows!!! :p

If I was going to keep it, it would already be running Slackware 13.1 with Fluxbox. I'd probably max out the IDE banks with old harddrives I have laying around and use it as a file server for my network. But, I've already got a file server... and way too many old computers!!!

I still have it and a 347MHz I used the same image on... I also have a 1.0GHz w/ XP... that's supposedly sold tomorrow...

Tomorrow evening I'll probably drop all three prices by $10 if I don't hear anything...
 
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