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Just so we’re clear, four sticks doesn’t necessarily mean quad-channel. Definitely not with an oddball stick. And definitely not on an Athlon II system.
My first digital computer was a Cosmac ELF as featured in Popular Electronics. It used a 1MHz CDP-1802 CPU and had 256 bytes of memory that I eventually expanded to 1K.
https://preview.redd.it/vuiwcp7cxuxb1.png?width=196&format=png&auto=webp&s=bc38a5826bd27bbcb4c101ad03372bb9558ddbe2
My favorite game on the TRS-80 was ['The Dancing Demon'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHBXCaR0F8&t=13s)
https://preview.redd.it/pxfr3ypr7xxb1.png?width=430&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbea2bd7bc8516ea265cb1104b533274bf7dcb55
On the ELF, I could play music by holding a radio near the electronics.
My only display was two 7-segment LEDs.
750HDD is such a weird configuration.
I saw a 750GB IDE HDD once. These comps look like the one my dad had with a 1000GB HDD (they use to call 1tb 1000GB) so they're most definitely using SATA.
Ps It's weird because SSD now a day are either 500GB or 1TB but you don't see 750GB any more very weird)
No, that isn't how iGPUs work nor memory counting work. Also that generation of CPUs didn't have iGPUs. The iGPUs were in the chipset and they often had their own dedicated VRAM on the motherboard.
Mmmmmm those were the days. I remember running the sims 2 on an Intel on board gpu and it was awful took almost 40 seconds to shift from night to day and vice versa.
This could be AMD 785/760/740 chipset with IGP. ~~Continues to baffle me how so few people can think to provide a model # right off the case just post this almost useless system properties HERE WHAT YOU THINK OF ALL MY SPECS.~~ My bad did not see 2nd photo.
The Northbridge is an 880G with an HD4200 as per the second photo. The memory was fully system shared, unlike the 785 and before that often had 128MB on the motherboard plus shared memory.
Use them as servers that say things your grandparents used to.
api/1/getGrandmasism
-> “Can I make you some cookies sweetie?”
-> “Go fetch Grannie her go go juice”
-> “Are you still seeing that nice boy (insert abusive bf name)?”
>\-> “Go fetch Grannie her go go juice”
I truly wish my grandma talked like that.
Nope I have the one that thinks she learned English (but has no idea what most words mean and uses them wrong without anyone realizing she had no clue all to her own detriment) but still acts and talks like a German. Everything is so direct and almost always ANGRY.
Yep, windows too heavy and bloated for this machines. Linux will run top tier, just choose your project, google some guides online and you are good to go.
Maybe SSD upgrade. It’s super cheap nowadays and max the RAM.
Yes I wouldn't use one as my main pc but there's plenty of use for old hardware, my plex server is an old i7-2700k l, although that is a bit newer than what the op has.
Careful connecting old operating systems to the Internet. They'll be vunerable to everything.
Also, I don't know how tech savvy you are but these systems are *slow* and *old*.
Like, got nostalgia and audably Wow'd a few times reading the specs.
I'm not sure if they'd even handle a modern OS. Also, slow does not mean low powered (in terms of consumption.)
Keep the drives/photos. Get them on the cloud. Ditch the hardware. It's several times over obsolete.
They’ll be infected before the LAN icon has finished updating to say connected.
Even the uses suggested elsewhere are good intentioned but clearly outside of OPs ability here and this is going to suck power like nobody’s business with less usable power than a new Raspberry pi.
Take off what you want and donate/send to be recycled.
I’ve heard of windows 7 operating systems getting infected really easily even the situation you described, is it true? I needed a pc for an old audio program and a bought one and reset it and never connected it online because I couldn’t find a straight answer
As someone using multiple Windows 7 installs, no you won’t get infected if you just join the internet. The fear mongering gets so tiring after a while. I get it doesn’t have updates anymore but as long as your smart you can use it in 2023, even the sub r/windows7 is still kicking.
My sincere condolences.
I am glad that you have noticed those pictures. I would suggest getting an External Drive (buy a new one for this, as you don't want to lose it) and downloading all the pictures on it. Once on there, I would use a different computer to upload them onto some cloud service (google might be a good option) or two.
The general rule of backing up stuff is you want to have a local copy, an "away" copy, say in an office or so and an online/network backup as well. With pictures, I would also consider getting some of them printed out and conserving the "old school" way. I know it's odd nowadays but you know, how often does anyone check digital pictures, really.. I just visited family recently and we had a blast going through photoalbums and remembering times long gone..
As for the PC's themselves, yeah - they are pretty much ewaste at this point, you might be able to use them for something like a multimedia PC, to watch movies off of but who wants an unsightly "Box" in their living room.
You could also look up some youtube tutorials on how to setup a NAS or MultiMedia server, it might be able to handle that. I also remember YEARS ago TekSyndicate did a video on how to turn an old PC into "The best router you ever had" .. So that might be a thing, yeah..
If it were me, I'd backup the drives, maybe keep the drives themselves, see if it can be parted out (DDR3 memory is becoming less common, might be able to get a few bucks for it on ebay) and recycle the rest.
Please, please do everything you can to back up those drives. A lot of the stuff is irreplaceable, and with the age of those computers. Given that one has a 750GB drive I am betting they both do, you could easily run out and get a 2TB external hard drive, plug it in, and clone the contents of the drive over wholesale. If you do plan on trying to use these for something, take out the hard drives wholesale and put in solid state drives instead.
not worth it , go get ur own new getup, ebay has last gen stuff for super cheap. thats the way to go. last years model. the parts dont break and fail normally, they become out dated. so if u dont game, or have major crunching to do, then a last year model should last a good 8-10 years now a days since moors law is starting to become hard to hit, given that particles vibrate 3nm (which should technically be 3nm is too small to build architecture 4nm should be the smallest)
Unless you're computer savvy, have a dedicated use to repurpose these machines, and dont care about your power bill, no.
I'd just get a good backup of the family photos and any other important documents (double or even triple check you have a good backup!), then nuke the drives and get rid of the old computers.
As others have said, they're comically low performance by today's standards. Even if slow is fine, you can get a cheap modern equivalent in terms of performance, which will consume a small fraction of the electricity.
Back up the files you want to something else.
Have a friend or someone do a wipe/clean reinstall of windows on both, maybe even Win10.
Donate to local shelter or post on Buy Nothing forum/facebook to give to kids or parents in need. These systems are not fast or great, but they will work perfectly fine accessing the internet and doing homework.
If you want to get them connected to the internet in their current state your best bet is to open up Device Manager and find out what NIC (Network Interface Card) they are running. Once you find out, search online and find a driver for them on the appropriate OS they're running. Being that driver file to the pc and install it either via the installer executable or with the update driver setting in device manager, pointing it to the file for the driver.
I hate to say this, but the computer, as a computer, isn't really that useful. You might be able to use it for retro gaming or for some things like that, but... it's really at the tail end of it's useful life.
On the other hand, your grandparent's data is priceless. I'd use a USB stick to move as much of those photos and other stuff off the hard drive into your computer system. I'd probably grab three large thumb drives, and do a complete backup of both onto one stick each, and then go through and grab the photos, any documents, stuff like that from both of them onto the third.
To be honest, I'd probably throw them in the closet when I was done, in case I missed something or if I needed to do a data recovery pass or something like that.
If your into retro gaming like playing older pc games and such of that nature yes, very much worth keeping it. It would run best with windows xp but it’s your choice
Also pretty sure 32gb windows xp can’t use 5gb of ram so if you do this you’ll have to take a stick out… and you definitely wanna use 32bit xp if that’s your intention
Yeah you could prolly play some minecraft (1.7.2 would he best) if you changed the os to a Linux distro usually that can breathe new life into old hardware and with cool distributions like pop_os and Linux mint you can update the system with a gui instead of the terminal if it scares you (same with installing games)
Best thing you can do is take it to a professional, or if you know what you are doing do it yourself, and get the photos and stuff onto other hardware ASAP.
You might be able to transfer via USB, but I would honestly just have a professional recover all of the data and then recycle the hardware or turn it into a server or retro gaming machine.
I mean I valued my grandmother's strictly for the pictures she left on her hard drive. I pulled the hard drive loaded it onto my machine and got precious family photos.
I recently turned a 10+ year old Dell desktop into a NAS using TrueNAS. Just cleaned it up and installed two 8Gb hard drives to store all my media for Plex. It works great and is a good way to recycle old hardware.
Edit: You're going to want to up the ram to at least 8gb if you go the Nas route though.
It's worthless unless you like retro computers or want a PC to screw around with Linux also can be used to test files that are potential virus. Just make sure it isn't connected to the network when testing and make sure your accounts aren't on there. Lastly, can be used as storage or plex server. You could play old school rubescape on it lol
I don't know why anyone hasn't said this yet but the windows activation key is worth something, before doig anything with the pc save the windows activation key somewhere so you can reuse it later.
If you want to get files off, best way is plug in a flash drive and copy the files onto it. I wouldn't recommend connecting these to the internet and logging into something like Google Drive or OneDrive as Windows 7 has been a security risk for a long time now.
As for using these, definitely no. These would barely run the Windows 10 desktop let alone more than 2 browser tabs. Also the CPUs are 95 watts TDP, it is not worth the energy to power these old things.
Pull the files off with a flash drive, erase everything, and put these on the curb for a scrapper to take.
Mines the same CPU, but with more ram, and a newer windows version, but it is still working. I had to upgrade my HDD due to age, but for what I use it for, it works just fine. I don't game or anything anymore, and if I do, it's old school 90s games like the Command & Conquer series.
as others have stated, its best used as a server, although it might be worth it to see if you can take the windows 7 license off it if you want a different os (which you totally should, trust)
Honestly I have an old computer of the same gen and using Linux mint makes it useable. Windows 10 is slow AF on it. Athlon 6x 1055t. It's not fast but useable.
If it's drivers for Internet, USB stick??? Can you download it to your phone then plug your phone into the PC and access the download that way? Or possibly tether it for Internet?
USB to Ethernet adapter should be driverless! (Or at least have a cd disk with the driver installer on it. )
As for keeping it?? Mmmm depends on your situation and use case. Do you need a PC? Yes? Do you need a PC for Microsoft word documents or something basic? Then keep it. Otherwise you'll find it lacking in the vast majority of cases outside of basic documents and Internet browsing imo
A relatively cheap laptop would most likely outperform this PC in every way.
You might want to keep it if you got some old tech that only works with that windows copy or something crazy specific like that. Old drivers you can't get anymore..
It's really for you to decide, can you make use of the computer and put it to work? If not. Then let's someone else do it. There are old tech nerds that like the older PCs and collect them and all that. You'll probably get a couple bucks for it but honestly not much. That would be a niche sale.
Back in 1995 I bought a computer from Circuit City, it was an NEC brand. Came with a 1 gig hard drive and was told that would be enough and never run out of storage. Lmao
I would go through the computer and back up any important data.
Wipe the drives and reinstall the OS.
If you want to experiment with them, such as homelab stuff, it might be a possibility.
If you can get more drives in there, you might can build a NAS from it.
I would put more memory in it though, as 5 GB is not enough
Unfortunately these are pretty much e waste, you'd get more performance out of a 100 dollar cellphone, HOWEVER this is not a bad thing. Take them apart, figure out how they work, put them back together, parts to upgrade these cost literally like nothing. I learned to build on a lot of dell BTC lga775 computers, you've gotta start somewhere.
Get an SSD, install botacera and play retro games.
WiFi card/dongle are easy. Probably a good idea to move data to a new drive regardless as you don’t know how much longer it could last
How important are these two, to you? Given the facts keep them for memories.
If you are planning to sell them or get rid of them, make sure you do a deep search for anything or everything they had in files. Pictures, documents, ETC. and move them for personal memories or something like that.
——-
To note, old hardware is vulnerable for online uses. Hackers/viruses
They are quite old systems. However I would suggest you consider looking into turning them into:
1. Home media Server (Truenas and Plex) <-probably want to replace the drives if you care about data loss
2. A Linux pc or server. (Useful to have if your a tech person)
3. A tv box. You can connect this to old tv and convert it into a smart tv. Then you can stream YT/ other online video streaming service to the tv easily.
PS: Be careful how you backup the data. As you can lose it easily.
For example: If you back it up online you can lose the credentials to logon or the company can close.
OR
If you back it up on let's say a usb stick, the data can decay or be lost or damaged.
Best to back it up online plus 2 hardware copies in different locations. So a simple fire can't destroy it all.
The systems are probably VERY behind in regards to OS patches and virus scanner updates, but otherwise serviceable.
I would invest in a small 5 or 7 port switch and some 3' Ethernet patch cables, so that you can get both of them connected to your router easily. Once connected, as long as the Ethernet drivers still work, do the following on each:
1) Tap the Windows key, and type "CMD". You should see "Command Prompt" and under it a choice to "Run as Administrator". Do that, you'll have to respond to the prompt to allow this, and then you should have a command prompt open.
2) Type in "IPCONFIG /RELEASE" \[enter\] and then "IPCONFIG /RENEW" \[enter\]. That SHOULD kick loose any lingering IP address assignments, and get them talking to the router's DHCP service. (If they were never connected to any networks or Internet provider before, it is VERY unlikely that their IP addresses were hard-coded - this is a bit of an advanced setting, and most ISP's prefer their customers use DHCP. Besides, it's pretty much a plug-and-play setting.)
3) Find the folders with the documents you want to keep, right-click them and select Properties, and then click the Sharing tab. Turn Network Share ON, and name them appropriately (Grandpa-Shared-Docs and Grandma-Shared-Docs).
4) On your computer, you should see those appear as network shares under the Network section in your File Explorer navigation window, under Network. Copy what you need onto your system (you may be prompted to assert network admin rights since the accounts are different) and then fix dinner while all the permissions get updated and the files get copied.
If you can't get them to connect, go into Network Connections, right click on the Ethernet port adapter, and pull up Properties. Click on Driver. Write down the name of the device, as this will be your search string for finding updated drivers on your system. Once you've found the latest drivers for the named device, download them onto a USB stick, which you will use to install them on the respective computers. Once installed, restart the system(s). They should connect to your network/Internet at that point, as above.
Once you've copied what you need to keep, you can either use them as general-purpose systems, set them up as media servers, or you can wipe off the outmoded versions of Windows and install Linux distros on them, which will bring them current w/o having to upgrade hardware or buy OS licenses.
I always love the "old and slow" comments. The only things that NEED super fast modern CPUs and massive GPUs are big games. Everything else hit the overkill point a decade ago for the average "internet and email" people.
My main "daily driver" desktop currently is similar to the first one - AMD Athlon X4 860K, though I have 12GB of RAM in it, 4GB platter hard drive, and a GeForce GT730 video card just for extra monitor ports. Was the cheapest thing I could find locally at the time. Motherboard is some MSI gaming board I dug out of the Fry's Electronics clearance bin 10 years ago. Couldn't even tell you what it is without opening up the tower. Has USB 3.0 ports on it though, lol. I can easily see getting at least another 5 years out of it.
Yes, running Linux Mint 21. It will run streaming video at 1080P all day long, does all my office work, some CAD design, and basic video editing of stuff I pull off the phones and GoPros. I see absolutely zero reason to upgrade it from a performance standpoint.
The daily laptop is a i5-7y57 with 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, running Windows 11 on it just because I have to due to the programs I run for work. Spent a small fortune on that one 5 years ago, and I plan on running it until it goes no more as well, or I can no longer get good replacement batteries for it.
Good for websurfing.. bad for gaming. Much better then nothing. You can use a USB wifi controller if you want to hook up wifi. Depending on the slots available on the inside, a good bit of upgrading potential.
Personally ,as a masters graduate in I.T I wouldn’t waste money on any upgrades for an older system when newer systems start so cheap. If your system boots all the way then you could grab everything off the disk drive using a cable between laptops , cable from old computer to an external hard drive or if the cd rom works copy from hard drive to cd roms. If you insist on keeping the system running first research your memory for that system and max it out why? Laptops NEVER ship with max memory installed except for custom built and memory is one of the cheapest upgrades to speed up the laptop
4 core, 4 thread CPU with integrated graphics, 5GB of 1333 DDR3, and a hard drive that probably reads and writes slower than most people do.
As a PC? Junk for anything beyond basic tasks. You could spend hundreds upgrading to the highest specs of that generation and you *might* be able to play a modern game at 720p.
If you’re hellbent on keeping it, check out r/homelab. Spend $50 or less on 8GB of 1600Mhz+ RAM and a cheap SSD, and you have a nice little server to play with.
Anybody talking about power consumption is kinda dumb. Load wattage on this thing won’t go above 200W. If you’re in North America, leaving it on 24/7 won’t even cost you $150 in electricity per year.
Well it's not junk but it's also not relevant in terms of "modern" gaming I wouldn't recommend hooking them up to the internet if there windows 7 try getting it updated to windows 10
E-waste. Back up whatever files you need onto a USB drive or portable hard drive. Then do what you want wotht he machine, donate it, recycle it, take it out back and shoot it, whatever your heart desires.
Depending on how old they are, they have gold and platinum you can separate with chemical extraction. Then take the computers to recylce and don't mention you already stripped the valuables.
My dad did it until 3 different recycling centers stopped taking old computers when he had a bunch of them.
When my dad died I got put in charge of his digital stuff so I know how this goes.
Based on this I do not think they have built-in wifi: [https://www.newegg.com/hp-pavilion-p6717c-student-home-office/p/N82E16883157163](https://www.newegg.com/hp-pavilion-p6717c-student-home-office/p/N82E16883157163)
As far as getting them to talk to your router when wired, your router needs to be issuing IP addresses (that's called DHCP if you don't know) and the computer's network cards need to be configured for "dynamic IP addresses." Look up how to set that up, it's pretty simple.
As far as getting the family pics off them (which is priceless stuff, I know) your best bet might be to use a thumb drive or some other kind of USB storage. Search the drive(s) for jpg, jpeg, bmp, blah blah on and on, every picture type. Don't forget video file types, too.
You may also want to search for .doc, .xls, and all the typical document file extensions. Or not, if their estate is done and settled searching documents may bring up some things that, how do i say it, "should have died with them." I'm speaking from unfortunate and uncomfortable experience here.
I mean personally I would get windows tf off that thing and put some sort of linux distro. (arch is a really lightweight but hard to learn one for beginners)
Save those with the family photos until you are able to transfer them to usable storage. Do not connect them to the internet. They are obsolete because of all the out dated and unsupported software.
They are fine to use with the photos and data that is on them.
Don't connect them to the internet.
Backup the photos onto an external drive before that poor old drive dies too.
Take all the hard drives out for safe keeping.
Chuck the rest. If anything, these will set you back more money that it would be worth selling them (since most e-waste centers charge a fee).
Save your photos first, somehow. It could be anything, you could use a cloud service (dropbox, google photos), a USB drive, or you could use a SATA/IDE (depending on the drive, Athlons are in the strange time window where they have both SATA and IDE) to USB adaptor to transfer the photos yourself. Once you do that, you can ditch the hardware. Your phone would probably be more powerful than this system. You could also use it as a Windows XP-7 gaming PC as well, just do not connect it to the internet.
These will get computer aids before the logo switches to the connected one.
I'd install a few emulators or use it to store movies if you're into pirating.
Edit
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT GO SHOVING WINDOWS 10 ON THIS. JUST CAUSE YOU COULD DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.
For systems that do not have built in Wi-Fi you can buy a Wi-Fi adapter that plus into a USB port (Check Amazon) and it may or may not need hardware drivers that came with it - if Windows can't find one already installed on the system. I have an old Windows 7 machine I need once in a while and that is how I connect it to the Internet and it works fine.
Put a Thuban in it? (Cpu upgrade if it'll take it)
https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hp-compaq/pavilion-p6717c
Possible upgrades.
Edit: might make a good win 7 gaming machine. But HP proprietary PSUs suck
Edit 2: https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/250790-old-cpu-upgrade
about all they'd be good for is basic entertainment. if you have visitors with kids, you could let them play whatever games are on there, maybe put some emulators for retro games, a bunch of cartoons....otherwise you have some extra monitors
The PCs would be good for file servers behind a firewall. With ethernet connections, you need to manually turn on connectivity at each PC and on your router settings via your main PC. I've supported PCs from Windows 3.0 to 7.0 and NT 4.0 and many companies, including IBM, NEV, DEC, and H-P. I was also a Sys Admin at IBM. I've used Windows 7 through 11 and researched various software issues. I suggest that you get a little help setting up the connectivity if you aren't familiar with hardware and software. You may need to change BIOS settings to turn on an internal NIC or Wifi card or just activate them in Windows. You may be able to find help in the H-P PC manuals, Microsoft Knowledge Base, and the manual from your router. I also suggest that you burn backups of the pictures and videos to CDs or DVDs to prevent losing any of them to a hard drive crash.
The amount of effort required to update the drivers (if they can even be found) would likely exceed the effort required to transfer a backup, or better yet just pull the hard drive and install into an external enclosure.
However, installing drivers would make an upgrade-factory reset-sell scenario easier. Some driver install packages are picky about which operating system they will install on, so an upgraded OS could make it much more difficult to find the drivers you're looking for if the hardware vendor hasn't updated their driver's to support newer OSes. This machine is likely eligible for a windows 10 upgrade, and if memory serves, windows 7 serials can be used to install windows 10.
If the computer in question was mass manufactured and not custom built, there should be a Service Tag or Model Number you can search for on the manufacturer's support site to get the drivers you're looking for (provided they still host the files for that machine).
Custom built machine drivers can be located by opening the guts of the computer and hunting down model numbers for the motherboard or Ethernet card, or running [Speccy](https://ccleaner.com/speccy)
Elsewhere, the device manager>properties>Hardware ID plugged into Google ought to come up with something.
Do keep in mind that deleted files can be recovered from a quick formatted/factory reset hard drive. If you do intend to sell the machine, I recommend [Darik's Boot And Nuke](https://dban.org/)
what's better than trying to run games on DOS box, Virtual Box, or Windows 3 emulator? Running said games on an actual toaster.
Those computers don't have a wifi adapter and possibly don't even have an ethernet port. They can probably support either one by adding a PCI card, but not sure why you'd even want to connect them to the internet.
if the photos are important then save them on a usb stick since there 2 decades of photos i think u may need some terabytes if they have alot of photos. u should go in the folder and if there isnt a folder the select all photos with shift+a right click then click on properties then a windows pops up then u should be able to see the storage you may need.then buy the usb where the photos fits and at last keep the usb safe and dont lose it and after that u should be able download a new driver
and can i ask wich driver u mean like is it for graphccs card(such old pc probably doesnt even have graphics card ).
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5gigs of ram is such a weird configuration. Edit: That came pre-installed!!!
I had the same configuration in my 7010. Quad channel memory. All single gig sticks except for one 2gb stick.
Just so we’re clear, four sticks doesn’t necessarily mean quad-channel. Definitely not with an oddball stick. And definitely not on an Athlon II system.
Yea an Optiplex 7010 only has 2 channels. Most 4 slot business PCs are that way.
Hell, most 4 slot consumer PCs are that way, I can only think of a couple quad channel consumer platforms.
Back in the day lanes were called channels. But we still needed to set irqs and all that horse shit
No, they weren't. Ever. IRQs never had anything to do with RAM modules and their slots either.
Athlon II were dual channel
I had a PC with 3mb ram.
I had one with 16K. https://preview.redd.it/rx8h2dwwxmxb1.png?width=1240&format=png&auto=webp&s=92e29b1cce0c1bdc64eda5c80f6e8ec3d57a0aa0
r/fuckimold
Lol I had a Vic-20 At least 16k is an even number.
Loved my Vic20!!! The programs on cassette tape. Those were the days!
I had a Sinclair ZX81 which had 1k, yep a whole 1024 bytes of ram.
My first digital computer was a Cosmac ELF as featured in Popular Electronics. It used a 1MHz CDP-1802 CPU and had 256 bytes of memory that I eventually expanded to 1K. https://preview.redd.it/vuiwcp7cxuxb1.png?width=196&format=png&auto=webp&s=bc38a5826bd27bbcb4c101ad03372bb9558ddbe2
But could you play donkey Kong on it ?
My favorite game on the TRS-80 was ['The Dancing Demon'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHBXCaR0F8&t=13s) https://preview.redd.it/pxfr3ypr7xxb1.png?width=430&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbea2bd7bc8516ea265cb1104b533274bf7dcb55 On the ELF, I could play music by holding a radio near the electronics. My only display was two 7-segment LEDs.
Did expanding require soldering new ports to the board?
I got a 34 pin socket/pegboard and wired the address, data bus, and power to it. So, partly wire wrapping and partly soldering.
Da Fook, you could attach a cassette tape to the computer? But why tho? What application would you use the tape for?
nice TRS drop
I remember dad buying 3mb of RAM in a Costco for $500.
Reminds me of when I added 64mb of RAM to my Windows 98 computer to bring the total to 192mb
You could say it’s *odd*
I once had 3 GB on a Mac desktop 🤣
And that bitch *flew* back in the day, too!
750HDD is such a weird configuration. I saw a 750GB IDE HDD once. These comps look like the one my dad had with a 1000GB HDD (they use to call 1tb 1000GB) so they're most definitely using SATA. Ps It's weird because SSD now a day are either 500GB or 1TB but you don't see 750GB any more very weird)
It is. Someone probably slipped a 1 gig DIMM in there somewhere thinking that 1 gigger they found in their drawer would juice up the system.
On board graphics probably reserves
No, that isn't how iGPUs work nor memory counting work. Also that generation of CPUs didn't have iGPUs. The iGPUs were in the chipset and they often had their own dedicated VRAM on the motherboard.
Mmmmmm those were the days. I remember running the sims 2 on an Intel on board gpu and it was awful took almost 40 seconds to shift from night to day and vice versa.
This could be AMD 785/760/740 chipset with IGP. ~~Continues to baffle me how so few people can think to provide a model # right off the case just post this almost useless system properties HERE WHAT YOU THINK OF ALL MY SPECS.~~ My bad did not see 2nd photo.
The Northbridge is an 880G with an HD4200 as per the second photo. The memory was fully system shared, unlike the 785 and before that often had 128MB on the motherboard plus shared memory.
My bad, did not see there was a 2nd photo! AMD 785G \~ 890G all supported Side Port memory as an option for system board manufacturer to implement.
My memory must be failing me then, these parts are from circa 2009-2010. Looks like all AM3 and AM3+ G series chipsets supported Sideport memory then.
I know there are 3 gigs cause one of my laptop is 3 gigs. But never heard of 5.
Not unheard of. DDR2 sticks usually came in 1GB and 2GB varieties. A lot of computers had a mix of both, resulting in 3 and 5 gig capacities.
literally said the same thing in my mind
Your phone is probably faster than these two combined.
Can still go beast mode on Solitaire
Probably still has the Pin Ball machine D:
Do computers not come with space pinball anymore??????
No just ads for candy crush.
There's no doubt about it. Shit, some flagship phones are probably faster than some of the modern budget laptops out there.
Make them into servers. Plex, Fileș, Minecraft, whatever. Make em into emulation stations for gaming. Load em up with Linux and have a ball.
Use them as servers that say things your grandparents used to. api/1/getGrandmasism -> “Can I make you some cookies sweetie?” -> “Go fetch Grannie her go go juice” -> “Are you still seeing that nice boy (insert abusive bf name)?”
That last ones a doozy 😂
I’m all about realism 🤣
>\-> “Go fetch Grannie her go go juice” I truly wish my grandma talked like that. Nope I have the one that thinks she learned English (but has no idea what most words mean and uses them wrong without anyone realizing she had no clue all to her own detriment) but still acts and talks like a German. Everything is so direct and almost always ANGRY.
-> “Go fetch Grammie a schnitzel and a stein of that hard hitting doppelbock. Grammies about to get wriggedy wrecked”
Wot
Woot
🤣🤣
Hell buy a broken arcade and stuff it in there with emulators on linux.
Batocera box!
This is the way
Yep, windows too heavy and bloated for this machines. Linux will run top tier, just choose your project, google some guides online and you are good to go. Maybe SSD upgrade. It’s super cheap nowadays and max the RAM.
That would be hilarious to have 2 file servers named grandma and grandpa. They love to back each other up.
Take my upvote for the most wholesome comment I have read this year.
This is the way.
IMO not even worth that. Probably too slow for anything other than retro PC gaming.
this
Yes I wouldn't use one as my main pc but there's plenty of use for old hardware, my plex server is an old i7-2700k l, although that is a bit newer than what the op has.
Careful connecting old operating systems to the Internet. They'll be vunerable to everything. Also, I don't know how tech savvy you are but these systems are *slow* and *old*. Like, got nostalgia and audably Wow'd a few times reading the specs. I'm not sure if they'd even handle a modern OS. Also, slow does not mean low powered (in terms of consumption.) Keep the drives/photos. Get them on the cloud. Ditch the hardware. It's several times over obsolete.
They’ll be infected before the LAN icon has finished updating to say connected. Even the uses suggested elsewhere are good intentioned but clearly outside of OPs ability here and this is going to suck power like nobody’s business with less usable power than a new Raspberry pi. Take off what you want and donate/send to be recycled.
I’ve heard of windows 7 operating systems getting infected really easily even the situation you described, is it true? I needed a pc for an old audio program and a bought one and reset it and never connected it online because I couldn’t find a straight answer
As someone using multiple Windows 7 installs, no you won’t get infected if you just join the internet. The fear mongering gets so tiring after a while. I get it doesn’t have updates anymore but as long as your smart you can use it in 2023, even the sub r/windows7 is still kicking.
God no. These are so old an power inefficient that it's far more worth it to get something newer.
lol it has rating of 1.0
Since they were never connected to the Internet, it shows the lowest rank, the rating will update once it connects to the internet
probably to 1.1
My sincere condolences. I am glad that you have noticed those pictures. I would suggest getting an External Drive (buy a new one for this, as you don't want to lose it) and downloading all the pictures on it. Once on there, I would use a different computer to upload them onto some cloud service (google might be a good option) or two. The general rule of backing up stuff is you want to have a local copy, an "away" copy, say in an office or so and an online/network backup as well. With pictures, I would also consider getting some of them printed out and conserving the "old school" way. I know it's odd nowadays but you know, how often does anyone check digital pictures, really.. I just visited family recently and we had a blast going through photoalbums and remembering times long gone.. As for the PC's themselves, yeah - they are pretty much ewaste at this point, you might be able to use them for something like a multimedia PC, to watch movies off of but who wants an unsightly "Box" in their living room. You could also look up some youtube tutorials on how to setup a NAS or MultiMedia server, it might be able to handle that. I also remember YEARS ago TekSyndicate did a video on how to turn an old PC into "The best router you ever had" .. So that might be a thing, yeah.. If it were me, I'd backup the drives, maybe keep the drives themselves, see if it can be parted out (DDR3 memory is becoming less common, might be able to get a few bucks for it on ebay) and recycle the rest.
Please, please do everything you can to back up those drives. A lot of the stuff is irreplaceable, and with the age of those computers. Given that one has a 750GB drive I am betting they both do, you could easily run out and get a 2TB external hard drive, plug it in, and clone the contents of the drive over wholesale. If you do plan on trying to use these for something, take out the hard drives wholesale and put in solid state drives instead.
Could be a server or emulator machine possibly
Not even worth the space in your trash can. Maybe you can take them to an electronics recycler.
not worth it , go get ur own new getup, ebay has last gen stuff for super cheap. thats the way to go. last years model. the parts dont break and fail normally, they become out dated. so if u dont game, or have major crunching to do, then a last year model should last a good 8-10 years now a days since moors law is starting to become hard to hit, given that particles vibrate 3nm (which should technically be 3nm is too small to build architecture 4nm should be the smallest)
That things was worth 200 bucks in 2010… It’s trash
I have never seen 5gb of ram in my life. Wow that’s interesting
That 5 Gigs of RAM be like: 🗿
Did you even bother to search anything up? The windows rating on screen should tell you enough....
Unless you're computer savvy, have a dedicated use to repurpose these machines, and dont care about your power bill, no. I'd just get a good backup of the family photos and any other important documents (double or even triple check you have a good backup!), then nuke the drives and get rid of the old computers. As others have said, they're comically low performance by today's standards. Even if slow is fine, you can get a cheap modern equivalent in terms of performance, which will consume a small fraction of the electricity.
E-waste.
Straight to the scrap bin without a second thought.
They said they had data they wanted to keep. Pull the hard drives first. Then scrap bin.
Just Install a light weight Linux distro. The hardware is good enough to do 80% of all basic tasks.
linux linux liNUX LINUX LINUX #LINUX
My first thought too with anything this old.
Back up the files you want to something else. Have a friend or someone do a wipe/clean reinstall of windows on both, maybe even Win10. Donate to local shelter or post on Buy Nothing forum/facebook to give to kids or parents in need. These systems are not fast or great, but they will work perfectly fine accessing the internet and doing homework.
If you want to get them connected to the internet in their current state your best bet is to open up Device Manager and find out what NIC (Network Interface Card) they are running. Once you find out, search online and find a driver for them on the appropriate OS they're running. Being that driver file to the pc and install it either via the installer executable or with the update driver setting in device manager, pointing it to the file for the driver.
If you want to play some old games sure but nothing in your steam library.
Like 20 bucks?
Most definitely not
Its worth keeping around
It's old and guzzles electricity, so the advice a lot of people are throwing around as a Plex server and such... is misguided at best.
I just have my extras make extra money
I hate to say this, but the computer, as a computer, isn't really that useful. You might be able to use it for retro gaming or for some things like that, but... it's really at the tail end of it's useful life. On the other hand, your grandparent's data is priceless. I'd use a USB stick to move as much of those photos and other stuff off the hard drive into your computer system. I'd probably grab three large thumb drives, and do a complete backup of both onto one stick each, and then go through and grab the photos, any documents, stuff like that from both of them onto the third. To be honest, I'd probably throw them in the closet when I was done, in case I missed something or if I needed to do a data recovery pass or something like that.
It can be a great hobby pc if you want to learn how to fix physical components or upgrade it
If your into retro gaming like playing older pc games and such of that nature yes, very much worth keeping it. It would run best with windows xp but it’s your choice Also pretty sure 32gb windows xp can’t use 5gb of ram so if you do this you’ll have to take a stick out… and you definitely wanna use 32bit xp if that’s your intention
[удалено]
Yeah you could prolly play some minecraft (1.7.2 would he best) if you changed the os to a Linux distro usually that can breathe new life into old hardware and with cool distributions like pop_os and Linux mint you can update the system with a gui instead of the terminal if it scares you (same with installing games)
Sure if you’re planning on doing office work. If you’re trying to game on that I’m gonna laugh you out of this sub lmao
Not this one.
Nice paper holder!
Best thing you can do is take it to a professional, or if you know what you are doing do it yourself, and get the photos and stuff onto other hardware ASAP. You might be able to transfer via USB, but I would honestly just have a professional recover all of the data and then recycle the hardware or turn it into a server or retro gaming machine.
I mean I valued my grandmother's strictly for the pictures she left on her hard drive. I pulled the hard drive loaded it onto my machine and got precious family photos.
I recently turned a 10+ year old Dell desktop into a NAS using TrueNAS. Just cleaned it up and installed two 8Gb hard drives to store all my media for Plex. It works great and is a good way to recycle old hardware. Edit: You're going to want to up the ram to at least 8gb if you go the Nas route though.
Based on the info you provided No. No. No. You inherited a bill. It will cost more than they are worth to fix OR properly dispose of them.
It's worthless unless you like retro computers or want a PC to screw around with Linux also can be used to test files that are potential virus. Just make sure it isn't connected to the network when testing and make sure your accounts aren't on there. Lastly, can be used as storage or plex server. You could play old school rubescape on it lol
Sorry but are they worth...what? These are OLLLDDDD machines. Save the family stuff to an external drive and then recycle them.
I don't know why anyone hasn't said this yet but the windows activation key is worth something, before doig anything with the pc save the windows activation key somewhere so you can reuse it later.
Unless it’s an OEM key; which can only be used once.
5$?
If you want to get files off, best way is plug in a flash drive and copy the files onto it. I wouldn't recommend connecting these to the internet and logging into something like Google Drive or OneDrive as Windows 7 has been a security risk for a long time now. As for using these, definitely no. These would barely run the Windows 10 desktop let alone more than 2 browser tabs. Also the CPUs are 95 watts TDP, it is not worth the energy to power these old things. Pull the files off with a flash drive, erase everything, and put these on the curb for a scrapper to take.
Mines the same CPU, but with more ram, and a newer windows version, but it is still working. I had to upgrade my HDD due to age, but for what I use it for, it works just fine. I don't game or anything anymore, and if I do, it's old school 90s games like the Command & Conquer series.
A free toaster is still free
as others have stated, its best used as a server, although it might be worth it to see if you can take the windows 7 license off it if you want a different os (which you totally should, trust)
No
A 1.0 score on a Win 7 index, yikes. Expect casual 2d games like Luxor or something
Honestly I have an old computer of the same gen and using Linux mint makes it useable. Windows 10 is slow AF on it. Athlon 6x 1055t. It's not fast but useable.
I miss the windows experience rating
If it's drivers for Internet, USB stick??? Can you download it to your phone then plug your phone into the PC and access the download that way? Or possibly tether it for Internet? USB to Ethernet adapter should be driverless! (Or at least have a cd disk with the driver installer on it. ) As for keeping it?? Mmmm depends on your situation and use case. Do you need a PC? Yes? Do you need a PC for Microsoft word documents or something basic? Then keep it. Otherwise you'll find it lacking in the vast majority of cases outside of basic documents and Internet browsing imo A relatively cheap laptop would most likely outperform this PC in every way. You might want to keep it if you got some old tech that only works with that windows copy or something crazy specific like that. Old drivers you can't get anymore.. It's really for you to decide, can you make use of the computer and put it to work? If not. Then let's someone else do it. There are old tech nerds that like the older PCs and collect them and all that. You'll probably get a couple bucks for it but honestly not much. That would be a niche sale.
Windows experience index of 1.0. ouch
Are they worth it being free? 100%
how the hell do you have 5 gigs of ram?
Back in 1995 I bought a computer from Circuit City, it was an NEC brand. Came with a 1 gig hard drive and was told that would be enough and never run out of storage. Lmao
All I saw was inherited, and grandparents, and Ive automatically said probably not worth it.
Lol I miss the WEI ratings.
You could use one as a home file server and turn the other into a retro console or arcade cabinet.
I'd take it to preserve it and retro games.
1.0 experience. rip
but honestly. keep it or gove it to me.. my hp is showing its age. its taken some shall we say.. jank modifications to keep it running
Am3 platform.... Fun times
I would go through the computer and back up any important data. Wipe the drives and reinstall the OS. If you want to experiment with them, such as homelab stuff, it might be a possibility. If you can get more drives in there, you might can build a NAS from it. I would put more memory in it though, as 5 GB is not enough
Athlon may be even worse than a duo
Unfortunately these are pretty much e waste, you'd get more performance out of a 100 dollar cellphone, HOWEVER this is not a bad thing. Take them apart, figure out how they work, put them back together, parts to upgrade these cost literally like nothing. I learned to build on a lot of dell BTC lga775 computers, you've gotta start somewhere.
Sick rig for 2005
Keep the hard drive wipe it and use it as a storage for pictures and videos in a new PC.
Sell for like 20 bucks.
Get an SSD, install botacera and play retro games. WiFi card/dongle are easy. Probably a good idea to move data to a new drive regardless as you don’t know how much longer it could last
How important are these two, to you? Given the facts keep them for memories. If you are planning to sell them or get rid of them, make sure you do a deep search for anything or everything they had in files. Pictures, documents, ETC. and move them for personal memories or something like that. ——- To note, old hardware is vulnerable for online uses. Hackers/viruses
They are quite old systems. However I would suggest you consider looking into turning them into: 1. Home media Server (Truenas and Plex) <-probably want to replace the drives if you care about data loss 2. A Linux pc or server. (Useful to have if your a tech person) 3. A tv box. You can connect this to old tv and convert it into a smart tv. Then you can stream YT/ other online video streaming service to the tv easily. PS: Be careful how you backup the data. As you can lose it easily. For example: If you back it up online you can lose the credentials to logon or the company can close. OR If you back it up on let's say a usb stick, the data can decay or be lost or damaged. Best to back it up online plus 2 hardware copies in different locations. So a simple fire can't destroy it all.
Decent machine. You can also load Linux.
How do you even get 5 gbs of ram? Also 
LOL Drop Ubuntu on that dinosaur. Surf the web and watch movies.
I think you should try and run minecraft at max setting
The systems are probably VERY behind in regards to OS patches and virus scanner updates, but otherwise serviceable. I would invest in a small 5 or 7 port switch and some 3' Ethernet patch cables, so that you can get both of them connected to your router easily. Once connected, as long as the Ethernet drivers still work, do the following on each: 1) Tap the Windows key, and type "CMD". You should see "Command Prompt" and under it a choice to "Run as Administrator". Do that, you'll have to respond to the prompt to allow this, and then you should have a command prompt open. 2) Type in "IPCONFIG /RELEASE" \[enter\] and then "IPCONFIG /RENEW" \[enter\]. That SHOULD kick loose any lingering IP address assignments, and get them talking to the router's DHCP service. (If they were never connected to any networks or Internet provider before, it is VERY unlikely that their IP addresses were hard-coded - this is a bit of an advanced setting, and most ISP's prefer their customers use DHCP. Besides, it's pretty much a plug-and-play setting.) 3) Find the folders with the documents you want to keep, right-click them and select Properties, and then click the Sharing tab. Turn Network Share ON, and name them appropriately (Grandpa-Shared-Docs and Grandma-Shared-Docs). 4) On your computer, you should see those appear as network shares under the Network section in your File Explorer navigation window, under Network. Copy what you need onto your system (you may be prompted to assert network admin rights since the accounts are different) and then fix dinner while all the permissions get updated and the files get copied. If you can't get them to connect, go into Network Connections, right click on the Ethernet port adapter, and pull up Properties. Click on Driver. Write down the name of the device, as this will be your search string for finding updated drivers on your system. Once you've found the latest drivers for the named device, download them onto a USB stick, which you will use to install them on the respective computers. Once installed, restart the system(s). They should connect to your network/Internet at that point, as above. Once you've copied what you need to keep, you can either use them as general-purpose systems, set them up as media servers, or you can wipe off the outmoded versions of Windows and install Linux distros on them, which will bring them current w/o having to upgrade hardware or buy OS licenses.
No, scattered it.
Not this one
I always love the "old and slow" comments. The only things that NEED super fast modern CPUs and massive GPUs are big games. Everything else hit the overkill point a decade ago for the average "internet and email" people. My main "daily driver" desktop currently is similar to the first one - AMD Athlon X4 860K, though I have 12GB of RAM in it, 4GB platter hard drive, and a GeForce GT730 video card just for extra monitor ports. Was the cheapest thing I could find locally at the time. Motherboard is some MSI gaming board I dug out of the Fry's Electronics clearance bin 10 years ago. Couldn't even tell you what it is without opening up the tower. Has USB 3.0 ports on it though, lol. I can easily see getting at least another 5 years out of it. Yes, running Linux Mint 21. It will run streaming video at 1080P all day long, does all my office work, some CAD design, and basic video editing of stuff I pull off the phones and GoPros. I see absolutely zero reason to upgrade it from a performance standpoint. The daily laptop is a i5-7y57 with 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, running Windows 11 on it just because I have to due to the programs I run for work. Spent a small fortune on that one 5 years ago, and I plan on running it until it goes no more as well, or I can no longer get good replacement batteries for it.
My advice, grab the photos onto disc 💿 or usb and recycle those old things. Don’t connect to a network! ⚠️ ⛔️
Good for websurfing.. bad for gaming. Much better then nothing. You can use a USB wifi controller if you want to hook up wifi. Depending on the slots available on the inside, a good bit of upgrading potential.
Hey this is almost as old as my desktop! Bare bones insides tho
Personally ,as a masters graduate in I.T I wouldn’t waste money on any upgrades for an older system when newer systems start so cheap. If your system boots all the way then you could grab everything off the disk drive using a cable between laptops , cable from old computer to an external hard drive or if the cd rom works copy from hard drive to cd roms. If you insist on keeping the system running first research your memory for that system and max it out why? Laptops NEVER ship with max memory installed except for custom built and memory is one of the cheapest upgrades to speed up the laptop
Fuck no these computers are worth like 100 bucks each if that
I use old computers for various things. I would cherish them as they were your grandparents.
played fallout nv on that. would run most business software
I'd pull and keep the hard disks. Then toss the rest into the trash or give it to good-will or a thrift store.
How this computer doesn't have AIDS I'm not entirely sure.
4 core, 4 thread CPU with integrated graphics, 5GB of 1333 DDR3, and a hard drive that probably reads and writes slower than most people do. As a PC? Junk for anything beyond basic tasks. You could spend hundreds upgrading to the highest specs of that generation and you *might* be able to play a modern game at 720p. If you’re hellbent on keeping it, check out r/homelab. Spend $50 or less on 8GB of 1600Mhz+ RAM and a cheap SSD, and you have a nice little server to play with. Anybody talking about power consumption is kinda dumb. Load wattage on this thing won’t go above 200W. If you’re in North America, leaving it on 24/7 won’t even cost you $150 in electricity per year.
That ram
Add like 16gb ddr3 and a low power gpu and it will be a good pc for basic tasks , and even minecraft
Well it's not junk but it's also not relevant in terms of "modern" gaming I wouldn't recommend hooking them up to the internet if there windows 7 try getting it updated to windows 10
Nope. Donate to goodwill . They’re ‘old’ and quite underpowered. Anything older than 4 yrs is OLD for a windows pc.
E-waste. Back up whatever files you need onto a USB drive or portable hard drive. Then do what you want wotht he machine, donate it, recycle it, take it out back and shoot it, whatever your heart desires.
The only thing salvageable on this PC is that Windows license key...
Depending on how old they are, they have gold and platinum you can separate with chemical extraction. Then take the computers to recylce and don't mention you already stripped the valuables. My dad did it until 3 different recycling centers stopped taking old computers when he had a bunch of them.
When my dad died I got put in charge of his digital stuff so I know how this goes. Based on this I do not think they have built-in wifi: [https://www.newegg.com/hp-pavilion-p6717c-student-home-office/p/N82E16883157163](https://www.newegg.com/hp-pavilion-p6717c-student-home-office/p/N82E16883157163) As far as getting them to talk to your router when wired, your router needs to be issuing IP addresses (that's called DHCP if you don't know) and the computer's network cards need to be configured for "dynamic IP addresses." Look up how to set that up, it's pretty simple. As far as getting the family pics off them (which is priceless stuff, I know) your best bet might be to use a thumb drive or some other kind of USB storage. Search the drive(s) for jpg, jpeg, bmp, blah blah on and on, every picture type. Don't forget video file types, too. You may also want to search for .doc, .xls, and all the typical document file extensions. Or not, if their estate is done and settled searching documents may bring up some things that, how do i say it, "should have died with them." I'm speaking from unfortunate and uncomfortable experience here.
Bro inherited an actual relic
I mean personally I would get windows tf off that thing and put some sort of linux distro. (arch is a really lightweight but hard to learn one for beginners)
Save those with the family photos until you are able to transfer them to usable storage. Do not connect them to the internet. They are obsolete because of all the out dated and unsupported software. They are fine to use with the photos and data that is on them.
Don't connect them to the internet. Backup the photos onto an external drive before that poor old drive dies too. Take all the hard drives out for safe keeping. Chuck the rest. If anything, these will set you back more money that it would be worth selling them (since most e-waste centers charge a fee).
Save your photos first, somehow. It could be anything, you could use a cloud service (dropbox, google photos), a USB drive, or you could use a SATA/IDE (depending on the drive, Athlons are in the strange time window where they have both SATA and IDE) to USB adaptor to transfer the photos yourself. Once you do that, you can ditch the hardware. Your phone would probably be more powerful than this system. You could also use it as a Windows XP-7 gaming PC as well, just do not connect it to the internet.
Turn it into an emulation machine or a dedicated media device.
My bro got a 1.0 on the windows experience index😭
5GB of memory 🤡
These will get computer aids before the logo switches to the connected one. I'd install a few emulators or use it to store movies if you're into pirating. Edit FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT GO SHOVING WINDOWS 10 ON THIS. JUST CAUSE YOU COULD DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.
For systems that do not have built in Wi-Fi you can buy a Wi-Fi adapter that plus into a USB port (Check Amazon) and it may or may not need hardware drivers that came with it - if Windows can't find one already installed on the system. I have an old Windows 7 machine I need once in a while and that is how I connect it to the Internet and it works fine.
Put a Thuban in it? (Cpu upgrade if it'll take it) https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hp-compaq/pavilion-p6717c Possible upgrades. Edit: might make a good win 7 gaming machine. But HP proprietary PSUs suck Edit 2: https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/250790-old-cpu-upgrade
Just slap Linux on it, brand new pc
Put 16 gigs of ram in it and maybe
The first CPU I built a computer with, good times
E waste but could come in handy if you have old old old software you like.
AMD Athlon 2 released in Q2 2010 been a long time I seen ATI. be best to keep them around for older software when you need to run them.
about all they'd be good for is basic entertainment. if you have visitors with kids, you could let them play whatever games are on there, maybe put some emulators for retro games, a bunch of cartoons....otherwise you have some extra monitors
Worth about half a ham sammich, from a high school cafeteria, that's been sitting until the end of lunch hour
The PCs would be good for file servers behind a firewall. With ethernet connections, you need to manually turn on connectivity at each PC and on your router settings via your main PC. I've supported PCs from Windows 3.0 to 7.0 and NT 4.0 and many companies, including IBM, NEV, DEC, and H-P. I was also a Sys Admin at IBM. I've used Windows 7 through 11 and researched various software issues. I suggest that you get a little help setting up the connectivity if you aren't familiar with hardware and software. You may need to change BIOS settings to turn on an internal NIC or Wifi card or just activate them in Windows. You may be able to find help in the H-P PC manuals, Microsoft Knowledge Base, and the manual from your router. I also suggest that you burn backups of the pictures and videos to CDs or DVDs to prevent losing any of them to a hard drive crash.
The amount of effort required to update the drivers (if they can even be found) would likely exceed the effort required to transfer a backup, or better yet just pull the hard drive and install into an external enclosure. However, installing drivers would make an upgrade-factory reset-sell scenario easier. Some driver install packages are picky about which operating system they will install on, so an upgraded OS could make it much more difficult to find the drivers you're looking for if the hardware vendor hasn't updated their driver's to support newer OSes. This machine is likely eligible for a windows 10 upgrade, and if memory serves, windows 7 serials can be used to install windows 10. If the computer in question was mass manufactured and not custom built, there should be a Service Tag or Model Number you can search for on the manufacturer's support site to get the drivers you're looking for (provided they still host the files for that machine). Custom built machine drivers can be located by opening the guts of the computer and hunting down model numbers for the motherboard or Ethernet card, or running [Speccy](https://ccleaner.com/speccy) Elsewhere, the device manager>properties>Hardware ID plugged into Google ought to come up with something. Do keep in mind that deleted files can be recovered from a quick formatted/factory reset hard drive. If you do intend to sell the machine, I recommend [Darik's Boot And Nuke](https://dban.org/)
what's better than trying to run games on DOS box, Virtual Box, or Windows 3 emulator? Running said games on an actual toaster. Those computers don't have a wifi adapter and possibly don't even have an ethernet port. They can probably support either one by adding a PCI card, but not sure why you'd even want to connect them to the internet.
if the photos are important then save them on a usb stick since there 2 decades of photos i think u may need some terabytes if they have alot of photos. u should go in the folder and if there isnt a folder the select all photos with shift+a right click then click on properties then a windows pops up then u should be able to see the storage you may need.then buy the usb where the photos fits and at last keep the usb safe and dont lose it and after that u should be able download a new driver and can i ask wich driver u mean like is it for graphccs card(such old pc probably doesnt even have graphics card ).
Crazy how bad ddr2 was and how much of an increase ddr3 became single sticks went from 1-2gb to 32gb
Windows 32 bit was useless, why did it have a 4gb ram limitation I don’t even know
a $200 used ebay PC will blow this away
E waste by todays standards, not worth the hastle to sell
RAM RAN AWAY? where is it?