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Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

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81–90 of 264 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#81
I put an Apple 4x PCIe AHCI SSD, a Radeon R9 280X, 2 additional SATA SSDs, and a USB 3 card into a 2006 Mac Pro with dual quadcores and 32GB RAM. In doing so, I converted it into a useful computer-cum-space-heater that handles almost any modern workload I can throw at it, except for things requiring AVX extensions that the CPUs don't support.

edit: even games! Even moderately-recent ones!

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#82
post #68

I have an old iPhone SE plugged in and running a simple web server via (disclosure: my app) http://pocketweb.io The two sample pages seen there are hosted from this phone. Edit: There's an Android version available as well.

Any alternative for Android? Edit: How is this working? I'm behind double NAT and other http servers do not work.

The website has a link to the Play Store..

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#83

I put an Apple 4x PCIe AHCI SSD, a Radeon R9 280X, 2 additional SATA SSDs, and a USB 3 card into a 2006 Mac Pro with dual quadcores and 32GB RAM. In doing so, I converted it into a useful computer-cum-space-heater that handles almost any modern workload I can throw at it, except for things requiring AVX extensions that the CPUs don't support. edit: even games! Even moderately-recent ones!

What OS do you run?

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#84
I have this for an old iPad 1 https://xaviesteve.com/pro/weather/

It tells the weather forecast and time for the next few days and at night it goes into 'dark mode' which is nice, have it in a corner in my living room.

Edit: forgot to mention that if you use it, remember to do the 'Add to Homescreen' so it displays in full screen.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#85
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What software do you use?

I hacked together an Android app specifically for the purpose, so it doesn't really answer the original question about generally available projects. (I haven't got round to releasing the code as it's rather bespoke, but could do if you're interested.)

this would be very interesting!

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#86
I replaced my roku stick with an old laptop and bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it was great having a super fast and responsive smart tv. Ultimately I replaced it with a $20 chromecast which is just as capable but with better ux.

Im using an ex corporate hp dl380e server for my home lab, loads of computing power for dirt cheap because there is no SLA.

The server was cheap but the electricity is not, and while its powerful I could get a modern quad core would be as powerful and use less electricity for about the same cost over three years.

A lot of this stuff is e-waste not because its no longer powerful but because it is no longer economically viable. A lot of e-waste, phones in particular go to Africa to be reused, outside of this I don't see any reuse / recycling thats realistic.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#88
I repurposed my old Intel Atom powered netbook to be an Emacs server. Until recently, it sat in a corner and would have a half dozen emacs session running screen. Every time I want to resume work on given project from any desktop or laptop in my office or when I'm travelling. I simply open a remote X11 emacs window on the machine, and viola! my entire development sesion is available to me exactly where I left off. Tools used: Emacs, X11 (for windows, mac, and Linux) Emacs tramp, and ssh, putty, and screen. For access from outside my network OpenVPN and Viscosity VPN client on Mac and Windows. Last week I replaced the atom machine with an Raspberry Pi 2.

Re: Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

#89
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a x230 last year as my non-gaming computer, and I really like it. I bought it for 117€, it was pretty beaten up. The display is the cheap TN panel, has a light spot in the center, and the keyboard doesn't match my locale. However, it has the top-level i5. (i5-3380M, I think). I also bought a docking station at a bargain. This year, I bought a new IPS display, a matching keyboard and a new screen bezel for it…

Enterprise ThinkPads are amazing machines. They're very sturdy (although the X230 notoriously has a weak screw holder in the top left (or is it right?) corner that will almost always break and make that corner of the case a bit wobbly. Annoying but not critical. And the i7 top of the range version that comes with the 180GB Intel SSD... Well, the SSD is bad and can be thrown out. It has a bug in its firmware that was…

While I agree with this, I have an Intel graphics version of the T430 (running Ubuntu) and it doesn't seem to play nice with two external monitors, even with the "fully loaded" docking station :(
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