Cool Things to do with an Old Computer
Posted on August 16, 2006
Filed Under Internet, Open Source/Freeware, Security |
My neighboor was filling the back of his truck today with junk to take to the dump. Among the effects doomed to spend eternity in the landfill were some old computers of the 486, Pentium, and Pentium II varieties.
It got me thinking. The question of what to do with old computers comes up quite frequently with clients and there’s no really good answer. Donating old computers to a charity is a great idea but often charities have their fill of antiquated computer equipment and are in need of more up to date gear. With that said, this is the best option if your charity of choice can use the equipment.
I’ve heard talk in the past of people who will take old computers for the purpose of recovering the gold in their circuit boards. I kid you not; there is often a small amount of gold in the traces, or connections, on an electronic circuit board but the operative phrase here is “small amount”. I suspect this one can be chalked up to myth as I’ve never really heard of anyone getting rich recovering gold from computer parts.
Landfill sites also don’t want old computer equipment. Computer equipment has a great deal of components that are hazardous including lead, mercury, and chromium.
So what does one do with outdated computer technology?
If you’re adventurous there are some Linux based packages that can breathe new life into an old computer. The packages we’ll look at here are fairly easy to setup and use and they’re FREE! Gratis, on the house, no cost, nadda! I’ll stop now, we’ve been there before.
IPCop (http://www.ipcop.org) is a full featured open source firewall. You can download it as an ISO CD-ROM image and burn it to a CD. Boot the old computer from the new CD-ROM and the installation process will start automatically.
Although IPCop runs on top of Linux, it’s really quite straight forward to install. Because IPCop is a Linux distribution in its own right, there is little to do at the command line other than set the unit’s IP address. From there everything is configured through a web browser.
While IPCop comes with a built-in VPN and many other options, there are also a myriad of add-on products that enhance the base product immensely. Most notable are Copfilter and Zerina.
Copfilter (http://www.copfilter.org) adds spam and virus filtering to IPCop. Copfilter scans all email by monitoring the SMTP and POP3 ports and uses the highly regarded SpamAssassin as the scanning engine. Everything coming into the network is also scanned for viruses using the open source (i.e. free) ClamAV antivirus package.
Zerina (http://www.zerina.de) is a product that adds OpenVPN functionality to IPCop.
OpenVPN (http://openvpn.net) is one of those open source products that sit on the cutting edge of technology. An alternative to Microsoft’s somewhat insecure PPTP implementation of Virtual Private Networks and the overly complex IPSec VPN technology, OpenVPN is relatively easy to use and is highly secure. In its Zerina form, OpenVPN is even easier to use as the entire configuration is done via a web page.
If firewalls and their add-ons don’t really impress you, perhaps — drum roll please — Network Attached Storage will. NAS is simply a means to add hard drive space to a network without adding a new server. NAS devices are still quite costly but, our old computer can easily become one with the addition of FreeNAS.
FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org) is built on FreeBSD (a free version of UNIX) and like IPCop is a distribution in its own right. In other words, there is one ISO CD-ROM to download that installs both FreeBSD and FreeNAS in one fell swoop. And like IPCop the only thing to do at the command line is set the IP address and the rest is done through a web page.
FreeNAS can be used to store files on a network and can also act as an incremental copy backup device. As a network storage device FreeNAS looks and acts just like any other shared folder on the network and it can even integrate with Active Directory to provide security.
The incremental backup option lets you back up only the differences in a file rather than the entire file itself resulting in a backup strategy that works well on a network without consuming a great deal of bandwidth.
There are options out there when it comes to disposing of old computer equipment. Some of them might take some imagination and some research but they can result in a valuable addition to home or business network.
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