What should I do with my old Desktop?

[hammackj]

I ordered a Powerbook last week, counting the seconds till it arrives but I want wondering What should I do with my old Desktop?

I do not want to sell it, It's specs are

3ghz,1gb ram, some 256mb nvidia graphics, audigy 2 sound, 2 200gb harddrives. It is a dell I used it primarly for coding and gaming.

I know I want to keep it for gaming, and use it to store all of my iTunes music for my ipods.

Is it possible for to read/write ntfs with os x? It would be awsome if I could set aside 100gb for a mirror of my powerbook's hd and just sync it at night.

Any other suggestions on what I should do? I plan to eventually replace it with a powermac or a iMac when the new intel processors come out.


-hammackj

 

[keysersoze]

Fold!

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to science.

 

[hhlee]

I agree with above: use it for distributed computing
Use it for iTunes server, centralize your music. In fact, use it as a general data server.
OS X seems to have no problems writing or reading on NTFS since I also have a PC server, though I'm not sure how elegant it will be to write to a different file system as a backup.

 

[MacNeXT]

Who knows, maybe you'll be able to run Mac OS X Intel preview on it in a couple of weeks/months.

 

[sigamy]

Rip all of your DVDs, convert to Divx, install Linux and MythTV and turn it into a movie server.

 

[Poeben]

Another vote for Linux. Not to say you shouldn't run windows---did I just say that? It couldn't hurt to learn the Linux CLI as it is very similar to OS X--if you're into that sort of thing.

 

[Brother Michael]

Either Dual Boot windows and Linux (PM for some neat Linux Distros) or just run Windows and Game with it.

Definitely fold.

Mike

 

[jim.]

If you are using it over a network (i.e. not directly hooking the desktop's hard drive up to your powerbook), then the type of FS on the drive is immaterial. To my knowledge OSX does not support read/write to NTFS partitions, so you can't hook up an NTFS-formatted firewire drive and expect it to work. Just use it as a network share and it will be fine.

Before I donated my old desktop, I used it as a central file/print/iTunes server. It worked well since I could just stick it away in a corner somewhere and not think about it. You want to game, so that may not be an option for you.

MacNeXT: Only if he gets ahold of OpenDarwin and starts writing his own drivers so something on his computer would work.

Jim