• Resurge@lemmy.mlEnglish
    30·
    2 years ago

    Yeah, using a 9 year old work laptop as my home server. Then with the surging energy prices last year I decided to switch out that laptop with a raspberry pi 4 as server.

    Conclusion: I now have a laptop and a RPI running 24/7 🤦‍♂️

    • dotfiles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      Conclusion: I now have a laptop and a RPI running 24/7 🤦‍♂️

      Sounds like a win to me. lol

    • TheInsane42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      My RPi4s and 3s will out perform my older laptops, apart from the just retired P50 (gpu nearly died). That one is 6y, the others are 11y old HPs and a 16y 32 bit Xxodd (wierd brand). tje RPis are sufficient for normal server use, the nwew laptop (last gen i9 with 64G mem) can host (nested) kvm clients, so no need for extra hardware. (And still I save them, just in case ;) )

        • TheInsane42@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          2 years ago

          I’m glad I don’t need computing power then. It just runs a webserver, 2 databases, mail environment, puppet master, icr client and some random stuff I just start and forget.

          It does the trick here and it and it’s predecessor Rpi3 and 2 managed, are quiet and enough for here. Both 3s boot from microsd and run from USB SSD for the OS, data is on nas. All are stock, no extentions, apart from an extra USB nic on my firewall. (Somehow having 2 different physical interfaces sounded preferable to me for a firewall)

          The old 3s are now interface for my smart meter and a domoticz system.

          BTW I see the Thinkcenter you mention for €250 online, My RPi4 cost me as kit €108 (8GB version). That was before all prizes went trough the roof though, as I see the separate board now for €125.

  • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    2 years ago

    I turned my ten year old Toshiba i7 with a cracked LCD into a virtual fish tank after the last fish died.

  • penguin_knight@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    2 years ago

    i disaseemble all my laptops so they are just a motherboard, screw them into sheets of MDF, place vertically, and use them as servers.

    NAS, pihole, plex, etc

    • lomEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      You have a tutorial? That sounds awesome.

      • Bitlummo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        This article talks about turning a laptop into a rack mounted computer. Each computer will be different recreating something like this based off what ports it has and where.

        • dotfiles@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I’m talking about the LCD/monitor. Maybe @penguin_knight keeps the LCD and mounts it to the board as well. If not, it’s headless. Mouse and keyboard are not the issue. I always set up raspberry pi headless because the OS allows it. All you have to do is add an ssh file to the /boot dir and wpa_supplicant.conf file in root dir. Other distros typically don’t, they need a monitor to be installed.

          • Kadath (she/her)@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            I know, that’s why I wrote external peripherals and not external inputs. I don’t want to sound cocky or be an asshole (we all know how easy it is by just reading a message someone you don’t know wrote), but after 24 years of being in system administration/engineering/architecture I may have sufficient grasp of what I am talking about. 😅

    • heimchen@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      My problem is that the ethernetports Clip is part of the case, without it, the Ethernet cable just doesn’t stick. Do you have a solution for this problem? A photo would be really cool.

  • AcidOctopus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    2 years ago

    I’m patiently waiting for someone (anyone) I know to decide to throw out an old laptop.

    Gonna bite their hand off for it, install Linux and proceed to fuck around and find out.

  • Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    141·
    2 years ago

    Do you mean a server with a built-in UPS, monitor, keyboard AND mouse? Hell yeah! My old Samsung Laptop has been running my game servers for quite a while now, and I have an old Asus running PiHole and Headcale. Works great!

  • O Galdo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    My laptop for home use is almost 15 years old. My desktop is almost 11 years old. My work laptop is 8 years old. Here they are talking about more modern and powerful equipment, defining them as obsolete. I don’t know, maybe we should start questioning if these consumption dynamics are a bit harmful.

    • TechnoBabble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      You’re right, but the vendors don’t support products very long, vulnerabilities stack up, safe batteries become expensive and hard to source, applications become incredibly bloated as they’re tailored for newer hardware, the power costs stop making sense…

      …and we can avoid all of that by getting a newer more feature rich machine every few years.

      Companies need to make ‘repair and upgrade’ the cheaper alternative before any sort of critical mass is going to get onboard with series reduce, reuse, recycle.

      So again, you’re right, but it’s a complex issue, especially in computing.

          • grumpyrico@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            browsers are not the only way to watch YouTube … mpv is older than most of his machines ;)

            but yeah - i get the point

            nevertheless there is a lot you can do with aged hardware - there are lots of desktops/windowmanagers which will happily run as well

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              2 years ago

              mpv is older than most of his machines ;)

              As someone who first started to load programs into his computer with a cassette tape recorder, I’m aware of that.

              browsers are not the only way to watch YouTube

              Between that and apps on a phone, nothing else comes even close in the percentage of usage for viewing a video on the internet.

              but yeah - i get the point

              Thanks. ]:D

              • grumpyrico@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                2 years ago

                As someone who first started to load programs into his computer with a cassette tape recorder, I’m aware of that.

                so you’re older than his machines as well … see - they are not that(!) old ;) :D :D

                i love my thinkpad x1 3rd gen and wouldn’t swap it for anything until it crumbles to dust :D

  • RoyalEngineering@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    2 years ago

    Old laptops can are actually great servers—hear me out:

    • Built in KVM
    • Low power consumption
    • Battery = UPS for power blips
    • SSD (sometimes)
    • Wifi + Ethernet = Redundant NICs
    • Quiet (sometimes)
    • Small form factor
    • utopianfiat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

      Really old laptops have PCMCIA slots too that you can hook into newer interfaces. I used a PCMCIA eSATA card for a laptop NAS!

      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

        Absolutely. I still have my laptop from high school, and it’s battery has been long gone. The screen is on its last legs.

        Maybe it will be a server one day, but for now it’s my DnD laptop. Sucks a bit when somebody bumps the power cord and the battlemap turns off. But it’s still limping by.

  • Elegast@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    yep!

    I used to run an old Dell R610. Used a decent amount of power.

    Switched to an old 4th gen quadcore i7 laptop.

    Been running great, uses less power, has a built in display and keyboard.

    Linux base, Docker Env for most everything else.

      • Elegast@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        yeah that’s nice. Though I’ve read that it’s a good idea to bypass the battery due to the device being on more it could cause the battery damage?

  • Kazumara@feddit.deEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    No, I use the old desktops for that.

    Old laptops usually seem to go to other people:

    • My first one I gave one to a girl who’s house burned down in my street.
    • The second one went to my ex who is on really hard financial times and the old Macbook she got from another good soul died on her.
    • The third one I traded in with my mom who really wanted a light one, and in exchange she contributed to…
    • My fourth one that had more power for compiling things in my studies. This one I still have and use occasionally.
    • Thomrade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      It’s hard to get a hold of the raspberry pi model 4 where I am unfortunately. I had wanted to use it to host some hobby projects locally and maybe as a low powered game sever, though i doubt it could handle it. It might be a fun project to try run an older laptop off solar l, I must look into it anyone has tried that.

  • LordChaos82@fosstodon.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    @rockhandle That’s how I started. Proxmox on a 9 year old laptop with LXC and VMs. Even now that laptop runs proxmox with pfsense and pihole VMs and is serving as my home router :)