Actually, there are all kinds of interesting projects that can be undertaken
with old pc's, from burglar alarms to environmental controls and lawn
watering sensors.  12 years ago we used a 286 as a programmable remote for a
120 channel cable tv system.  It did things like log all the channels and
times you watched, auto-assign the last ten channels viewed to hot keys, let
you make notes, schedule future viewing alarms and tune to them
automatically if you had the tv and the pc on, and auto-scan, stopping 5
seconds on each of the channels you have viewed that evening and skipping
over the rest, a surfer's dream come true. We could have added joy-stick or
mouse support. Unfortunately, it was a lot bigger than an infra-red remote,
so it lasted less than a month before it went back into the closet. We also
had to learn how to program the device driver in C for the off the shelf tv
tuner. It all ran in dos, by the way.
If I were to make a hobby (and hobby is the operative word, because whatever
you build, you could have bought one cheaper) of this sort of thing again, I
would use nothing less than a 486,and more probably a recently retired
celeron notebook, for two reasons.  It would be a true 32bit pc, and I might
need that depending on the project, and they are typically 'green', or low
power usage rated.  The 286 by comparison, can really pull some watts if you
intended to run it unattended 24/7, and that doesn't consider how unreliable
such an old pc might prove to be.
Locally here, there is a ten dollar fee for a business to throw away a pc.
I suppose they will try to charge consumers soon too.
Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 15:15:22 -0400 Ralph Willing <[log in to unmask]>
writes:
> Maybe this group has some ideas/suggestions.
> Other than the obvious "Boat anchor", what use is an IBM-AT, with a
> 20 meg HD?  Not sure of the vintage, it's been out in the garage too
> long.  Probably about 4-8 Meg speed.

> Ralph

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