Yes, we can have nice things!-post your non gaming finds

[Ziggy587]

Got myself the Harbor Freight dust collector! I've been prepping to turn an area of my basement into a proper workshop. I used a 20% off coupon (it seems like most people that buy these things wait for a 20% off coupon first).



Honestly, I could have saved $195 and built a cyclone for my Shop Vac and that would have been good enough, but that set up tends to be very clunky and restrictive.

The only con that I can really see with this dust collector is that it has a 5 micron bag. Apparently you really want something like 0.5 micron filtration. I should probably treat my lungs as good as I can since I was a smoker for 16 years. You can get a better bag for it, but I think I might try and put the whole thing on the other side of the wall to my workshop, then just feed the hose through the wall. The benefit would be drywall having a 0.0 micron filtration rating. But I guess the down side would be that I'd have to walk all the way around to the other room to check if the bag is full or shack out the filter bag if it gets clogged. I guess I could see how much a 0.5 micron bag would be, but from what I've seen the higher filtration stuff tends to be expensive!

[fastbilly1]

I have the same collector, but no bag or mount.

[Tanooki]

Goodwill happened to turn up an Acer Aspite 1 D250 for $10. https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-aspi ... 250/specs/

I wasn't sure it was ok at first, had the right superficial cap missing outside the hinge gone and it was stuck under some passwords. Using the phone, figured out how to brute force partition/reinstall the entire thing to factory using the hidden acer setup within which took probably 40min or so and in that time looked at other crap on my phone and let it try and charge it too. Once I confirmed it wasn't messed up I snapped it up. NFS -- It's pink and white, going to be my little girls first computer. I just finished cleaning out all the useless Acer tools and other garbage, put on 2 browsers I researched that XP still support along with avast which retained XP support too. I made her her own account and short cut to desktop the calculator, wordpad, and paint so she can get some experience. Not bad

Also ordered the 2GB ram chip for the thing new for $10 shipped to arrive during the next week so it won't be so sluggish. My first portable was a pretty similar netbook too so I know it will help. Kind of wish it had Win7 32bit on there, finding that today with a key is a pain. If she ends up not liking it, pink or not, it will run 16bit windows and dos stuff nicely enough so that's a win too.

[samsonlonghair]

Not a bad score for ten dollars. You might want to consider disabling the Wi-Fi by uninstalling the driver. Win XP really shouldn't be connected to the internet anymore. It's wide open - and an antivirus is just not sufficient protection.

Anyway, an old netbook like that would be cool for 8bit emulation or listening to .MP3 files. Lots of cool projects could be had. It should run win95 or win98 games real well.

If your girl is the creative type, she could learn to make graphics in Photoshop7.0 or record and edit audio in cool edit pro 2.0 software. Either of those old pieces of software should run fine with one gig of RAM and an atom processor. Heck, it might even be overkill.

Cool score, tanooki!

[Tanooki]

Well I did read into that issue. It's only on when she uses it which is pretty limited, and if it is, I put the maxthon browser which is updated for XP and avast which is too. I'm sure someone near by wanted to try and park in the drive way and backdoor a 10 year old laptop they could, but it's not traveling anywhere.

There are three programs I put on there to start for her being 6 that her school uses/suggested called TuxPaint (its like kids photoshop), TuxMath, and TuxTyping. I also threw a few games on there she could learn kind of from (Sim City Classic and Sim Tower) and just some goof off pinball I have discs/GoG for. Also snapped up The Manhole Masterpiece Edition which is fantastic for kids too. I see no real reason to get it online unless on her google account the school setup something needs to be accessed, or I need to grab something that would be easier than me going between the 2 computers using my portable hard drive.


For me I was already on it throwing SimTower on there. I could also stuff some testy DOS stuff on there that would run very nicely too without dealing with64bit windows pissiness around dosbox. It's not a bad little thing, just limited, but those limitation would allow some far easier times running some 90s PC gems that don't require a CD to fire up. 1GB let alone 2GB of RAM I'd not want to try and even mount an ISO, but if I ever come across a ridiculously cheap second hand usb CD drive I'll add it to the mix.

[marurun]

I think what he meant is that there are fundamental security holes in XP that will never be closed. Simply having an XP machine on-line means it is available for pwnage. It's not about IF it will become infected with something, but about how quickly. If you connect the laptop to the internet it will get pwned. Doesn't matter how you do it or what browser you use.

[samsonlonghair]

Hey Tanooki,

I thought of another good use for an old laptop. I used an old Lenovo and installed a version of ChromeOS called, “cloudready” by Neverware. It’s a great solution for browsing the web safely on an old laptop. Basically, you wipe out windows entirely, and you just run a chrome-centric operating system like a cheap man’s chromebook!

[marurun]

Yeah, something Linux-based is the way to go. Simply having an XP machine on-line at all means it's an instant target. You could always run Windows in VirtualBox or something.

[Tanooki]

Fascinating, hadn't heard of it. The laptop though isn't online unless I enable it to be. Problem is the tools the school would like her to play with needs windows, no android versions or linux for that matter either.

I imagine if I end up having a space where it would need to be online at all times I would probably just buy a key for Win7 and some install file I can dump on my portable hard drive and load it from that into the old netbook. I know you can get those types of key/setup for I think around $30 or so.

[fastbilly1]

XP can be hacked with just someones IP address, which can easily be obtained. Even through a consumer firewall. The only way I would put an XP pc online for any amount of time would be through another pc that monitors all traffic.

My most recent good fine was a Mavica FD88. The only issue was that the floppy arm had been bent so a floppy would not fit inside. So for $2 and 30 minutes of work, I got myself the same kind of digital camera I used in college. I used it to shoot one of my wife's friends weddings who is big into 90s stuff (it makes every photo look like a late 90s website.


Image by Ken Rockwell

Edit:
I also picked up a royal flush of pre Civil War playing cards and a set of cheater dice from the same era (two fives per die). The playing cards backs are of a luxury style used before the war, but the cards have the same face and feel of Civil War cards. The dice are bone and hand inked, but past that dating them is difficult.