Opinon on what to do with old computer parts

[frederick]

I have a
pIII 600mhz process with heatsink fan.
CDRW
3 gig hard drive
floppy drive
old at computer aprox pI 133.

I was thinking of making a PIII computer. But looking at the costs for case, memory, hard drive and motherboard. I would be cheapter to buy a used pIII.

I want your advice and opinon. I currently have
PIII 1ghz
512Meg ram
DVDrw
20gig hd
80gig hd
1394 capture card
nic card
video card.
I have no Pci left so I would added an other IDE controller to add this 3 gig hd to the computer.

I though about having another computer for just my software devopment,scanner,palm device, digital camera.

If I build another would it more cost effective to make a p4 or equivalent pc for just my capture, editing and burning. This is not a big pressing issue. Just want your advice

Thx in advance

[Excellerator]

Sometimes having two computers can be helpful. What I did myself was to buy a Dell laptop Inspiron 8100 which is a P III 1.2G machine. I then took my older P III 450Mhz machine and formatted the hard drive, installed Windows XP, DVD Decrypter, DVD2ONE, DVD Shrink, Instant Copy, and DVDXCOPY. I also added a 60G hard drive to it and a USB 2.0 controller to hook my Lacie external DVD-RW drive to (Pioneer 105). I now use this machine strickly for DVD burning. Although with the drive being external I can also use it with the laptop when I want to backup or use it with the laptop. Frees up one computer when doing the time consuming tasks of ripping movies, re-encoding, etc. I am sure many people will say that the machine is too slow for that, but honestly the 450Mhz seems to be about as fast as the 1.2G machine for most things. Just an idea.

[menace]

build a mame machine--dedicated classic arcade games--fun for boys and girls of all ages (mostly 20 and up though )

[Karate Media]

Two of the best things you cn do with an old computer are

1) use it as a file server
2) use it as a router


As for building a P4 just for video work: A number of people do recommend this. If you are are interested in doing serious video work, and also write your own programs on top of that, you might want to keep those activities separate from eachother (I imagine that a particularly buggy app that you're trying to write/debug could easily crash your system)

If your current P3 computer is suitable for your application programming work and minor tasks such as scanning and such, then keep that and build a P4 system (or equiv.) for video work. The specs on your P3 look pretty good, but it really depends on how much video work you are looking to do. And definitely upgrade to Windows XP Pro (if you're using Me/98/95) for the advantages of NTFS, which will greatly increase the allotted file size for captured video from 4GB to (basically) unlimted GBs.

[DonVito]

Just give it to me!

[pacmania_2001]

How much for the P3 600Mhz?