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

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

#21

Post by RunningDroid »

hanniabu wrote: post #16
swiley wrote: post #5

I don’t know why everyone acts like old laptops aren’t usable, my 2011 MacBook Pro has no HD (the cable died again and I’m not replacing it this time) and it runs from ram just fine (with Linux of course, not OSX) If you’re not silly you really don’t need much computing power, even then newer laptops aren’t big improvements so if your old one still works I don’t see why you would replace it.

How can it function without a drive?

One way is to burn a CD/DVD live image that has your configs added and configure it to mount a mergefs(iirc) on top of the read-only /home so all writes go to /tmp/merge.

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

#22

Post by nidhalbt »

sdan wrote: post #17

Using an old desktop my dad gave me to spin up some websites getting 1,000,000+ unique visitors monthly. It has some basic specs: 12gb RAM and 8 cores from a decade or so ago. Was using Raspberry Pis before, but given that many Docker containers don't support ARMv7, I'm just utilizing the luxury of AMD64 (and using Docker Compose, Traefik, and Wireguard to do scaling and networking).

Really cool! But can you tell us what you use Wireguard for?

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

#23

Post by mr__y »

I use an old laptop (single core, 1g ram) as a remote desktop client. Since I work regularly in two different locations this allowed me to buy only one workstation which I keep at one location and that old laptop allows me to use it from the other one. TBH I initialy did it as a fun project/experiment but was amazed how well it worked[0] and stayed with it.

[0]That being said both locations have a fibre and the distance between them is below 20 miles so neither bandwidth nor response times cause any issues

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

#24

Post by 24hrsonline »

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

#25

Post by mr__y »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #10

I'm in the process of turning my Toshiba Libretto 110CT (a subnotebook from 1998) into a simple remote terminal (over ssh) with custom server software to handle emails, rss feeds, chats and so on. It runs under FreeDOS and connects to WiFi by a combination of PCMCIA ethernet adapter + mobile router with built-in battery. I love the form factor and the "oldschool" keyboard, I have regenerated the battery and it's quit…

Would SSH encryption add noticeable overhead to that use case? I've seen videos of folks using modern software on 80586-class ("enhanced" 486-compatible) devices and the overhead adds several seconds to any connection attempt and is even noticeable in normal use.

Since the GP mentioned it is a machine from 1998 I would expect it to be PII with a clock above 200MHz. Since the Moore's law actually worked in the 90's that machine will be a lot more powerfull than that 586 (from 94-95 I guess).

On top of that curves and chacha20 could be used for ssh to reduce the CPU load.

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

#26

Post by padthai »

swiley wrote: post #5

I don’t know why everyone acts like old laptops aren’t usable, my 2011 MacBook Pro has no HD (the cable died again and I’m not replacing it this time) and it runs from ram just fine (with Linux of course, not OSX) If you’re not silly you really don’t need much computing power, even then newer laptops aren’t big improvements so if your old one still works I don’t see why you would replace it.

My personal laptop has 4Gb of RAM and terrible CPU (HP Stream 14). I only need more when I run an IDE or HD video.

For lots of cases, 1Gb-2Gb of RAM and some computing power is more than enough.

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

#27

Post by pkorzeniewski »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #10

I'm in the process of turning my Toshiba Libretto 110CT (a subnotebook from 1998) into a simple remote terminal (over ssh) with custom server software to handle emails, rss feeds, chats and so on. It runs under FreeDOS and connects to WiFi by a combination of PCMCIA ethernet adapter + mobile router with built-in battery. I love the form factor and the "oldschool" keyboard, I have regenerated the battery and it's quit…

Would SSH encryption add noticeable overhead to that use case? I've seen videos of folks using modern software on 80586-class ("enhanced" 486-compatible) devices and the overhead adds several seconds to any connection attempt and is even noticeable in normal use.

The 110CT model is relatively fast with a 233MHz processor so the overhead isn't an issue from what I tested so far (BBS over SSH).

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

#28

Post by lurker_primo »

swiley wrote: post #5

I don’t know why everyone acts like old laptops aren’t usable, my 2011 MacBook Pro has no HD (the cable died again and I’m not replacing it this time) and it runs from ram just fine (with Linux of course, not OSX) If you’re not silly you really don’t need much computing power, even then newer laptops aren’t big improvements so if your old one still works I don’t see why you would replace it.

Yup.. My 2012 Macbook Pro is also fine, and is the more capable among my 2 personal laptops. I upgraded it with SSD, and 16 GB RAM, and installed Manjaro. The day to day usage (photo editing with Darktable/Rawtherapee, some light software development etc) is fine - no stuttering. The other one is a Vaio from 2008. I upgraded that one too with an SSD and 4 GB RAM. It is fine for Media consumption and office tasks - no slowdown at all.

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

#30

Post by reeddavid »

Not a company, but sharing a personal project: I got a free broken 55" TV and turned it into a big daylight panel. I got a great explanation of why this works well (fresnel lens) from the DIY Perks channel on YouTube: Turning Smashed TVs into Realistic Artificial Daylight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4).

The main board had failed so the screen was black and the backlight cycled on and off. After disconnecting the main board, the backlight stayed on. I am using the existing LED lights, but may replace them with the excellent color quality LEDs recommended by DIY Perks.

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