I picked up another PC for $10 at a yard sale. Installed Linux and BOINC and away it went! I'm surprised at the quantity and quality of workstations which are discarded. I clean them up, load Linux and BOINC, then put them on a shelf to crunch the numbers. More to follow after this next weekend. :-) More fun than my old NSA days.

I picked up another PC for $10 at a yard sale. Installed Linux and BOINC and away it went! I'm surprised at the quantity and quality of workstations which are discarded. I clean them up, load Linux and BOINC, then put them on a shelf to crunch the numbers. More to follow after this next weekend. :-) More fun than my old NSA days.

I do that too, if you drive around on trash days you will see alot on the curb then too, first thing I do is wipe the hard drive with DBAN and then check out the rest of the pc, if it's good enough I crunch with it, if not it adds to the parts bin. I do the DBAN thing for two reasons...first I don't want any of their viruses etc getting even close to my pc's, second if they are crazy enough to NOT do it themselves at least I won't contribute to anyones identity theft. Besides a nice clean hard drive makes it really easy to install any OS on it you want.

If you are good with Linux you might also contact the Foster Kids section of your local Welfare folks and ask if they want any free pc's. Mine did and still does, as the foster kids often have nothing to call their own and a pc can help them 'fit in' better. They don't need the latest and greatest pc's, just something that can go on the net for their homework etc, and play cd's and dvd's so they can listen to their music and play some basic games. Foster kids often get bounced from place to place, so something they can call their own, and the Foster parents don't have to provide, makes the kids feel better.

I've already done that and have built about 10 laptops for one of the kid's groups. I load Ubuntu and they seem to get along fine with it. No complaints about "where's Windows -- since they've never used a computer before, they don't have any training on Windows to overcome.

On a new note, I've found and old Dell Server with Windows Server R3 (2003 version) on it. I'm working around setting it up as a dedicated Boinc unit. It originally came with some kind of proprietary RAID mounting device on a daughter-board, which had failed, and that's why the company owning it tossed it out. I am working on it now to get it to bypass the proprietary Boot ROM which somehow thinks it needs the server software -- or cripple ware if you know about the Windows Server 2003 debacle.

I've already done that and have built about 10 laptops for one of the kid's groups. I load Ubuntu and they seem to get along fine with it. No complaints about "where's Windows -- since they've never used a computer before, they don't have any training on Windows to overcome.

You are the man!!!!

On a new note, I've found and old Dell Server with Windows Server R3 (2003 version) on it. I'm working around setting it up as a dedicated Boinc unit. It originally came with some kind of proprietary RAID mounting device on a daughter-board, which had failed, and that's why the company owning it tossed it out. I am working on it now to get it to bypass the proprietary Boot ROM which somehow thinks it needs the server software -- or cripple ware if you know about the Windows Server 2003 debacle.

I like that too, I would have no clue how to make it work, but it's cool anyway!

Work-around on the server issue. Ubuntu. Took care of that. It should be up and running 24/7 in a few. Linux simply ignores the "special code" in the boot ROM. Sweet.

Work-around on the server issue. Ubuntu. Took care of that. It should be up and running 24/7 in a few. Linux simply ignores the "special code" in the boot ROM. Sweet.

+1

I do it differently...from a non-profit organisation I make a lots of letters to companies every 2y...& they donate the computers to us!

then I upgrade them to latest CPU available 4 MBO, put lots of RAM & crunch with them...that is how I managed to get my hands on Supermicro server board with XEON...now it's 3230 with only 4GB RAM, but with nVIDIA 730GT - was the fastest @ d time purchased for PCIe x8...
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

I do it differently...from a non-profit organisation I make a lots of letters to companies every 2y...& they donate the computers to us!

then I upgrade them to latest CPU available 4 MBO, put lots of RAM & crunch with them...that is how I managed to get my hands on Supermicro server board with XEON...now it's 3230 with only 4GB RAM, but with nVIDIA 730GT - was the fastest @ d time purchased for PCIe x8...
;)

That's cool too! I bought a Xeon dual cpu quad core machine on ebay for 300 US dollars delivered that included Win7 Pro on it and 8gb of ram, it has 16 cpu cores with HT enabled! I bumped up the ram to 16gb and it loves it. It is a Xeon 5520 running at 2.66ghz so not the fastest, but definitely the most cores of all my pc's. It does have a pci-e slot and a 650 watt psu in it too, but I have not put a gpu in it yet, I just don't have any spares right now.