Retasking old PC for parents

D

DarkScythe

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2008
Messages
367
Hello,

I'm thinking about retasking my old PC for my parents to use. Mainly, they want to be able to chat with their relatives online via webcam. The problem is I have no idea what type of peripherals are good for this because I never bothered with it.

First, I need to get the old PC working again. I was originally planning on turning it into a file server, but that never happened, and I ended up shoving 7 hard drives into my main PC instead (with a couple externals for backup.) The old PC has thus sat in a corner of my room gathering dust for the past year and a half.

It was my old main PC, so it's decently specced for simple web surfing and webcamming, I'd assume. It has an Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo (Rev 1.04) with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, as well as 1GB of DDR333 in an odd configuration (2x256mb + 1x512mb) and an old ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. I want to get this thing up with as little spending as possible, since most of the parts are already here. I considered getting a lower power video card, but AGP cards are scarce, and even the cheapest ones (like $40) aren't worth it in terms of power savings. It does need a PSU, but I'm thinking I'll toss in my current PSU and get myself another one since I've wanted to go modular. Hard drives are all gone, but I may be able to bum an old one (either IDE or SATA) from my friend. It does have a floppy drive, as well as 2 optical drives (1 DVD-ROM and 1 CD Burner.) Sound, I do have an old Audigy, but I don't think I'll bother with it, and just use the onboard. I also have a logitech keyboard and MX500 mouse, as well as the LCD I just upgraded from and a set of old 2.1 speakers to round out the package.

I believe the only major thing I'm missing is a good webcam, and an OS.
Webcam I'm completely overwhelmed by. There seem to be a bunch of options from Logitech, Microsoft and Creative, but they all strike me as having buggy drivers and software. Does anyone have any recommendations as to which to get here? I have no idea what software they will want to use, nor the quality limits imposed by them, so I'm not sure if I should just go for "max quality" or not. Of course, bandwidth will play a factor here, and so as to not disrupt the network too much, I may limit upload to around 10kB/s (Not sure how much is needed.)

OS is another thing I'm undecided about. being that they're completely new to computers and the internet in general, I'm thinking something of at least Win7 for security purposes. Unfortunately, I was never a fan of Vista (though 7 piques my interest) so I never made the switch myself. I'm in no way ready to make the move over to Win7 on my main PC either (I may give it a try on my laptop though) so my concerns would be that I would be unable to provide sufficient technical support when the situation arises (and I know it will come up.) The other problem is they don't understand English, so I will need to translate the UI as well. I know Vista was particularly stubborn about this (MUI only worked in Ultimate edition - I expect Win7 to be the same.) I'm not sure if any MUI packs are out yet though. Besides that, can I even run Win7 with such ancient hardware and only 1GB of ram? I tried briefly to search for more ram, but it's ludicrously expensive now, and I'd rather not spend $70 for 2gb of old ram.

On the other end, I can continue using the ancient XP, as I know quite decently enough how to work with it, and the MUI for it is less picky. The problem here is XP is pretty insecure IMO for people new to computers/internet.

Anyone have any ideas, or something I may have missed in my build/retask?

Thanks in advance.
 
IIRC, that board has NVIDIA SoundStorm, and isn't that better than Audigy1? bleh, I don't remember, sorry.

Anyhow, if its simple video chat they want, just pickup a $20 webcam. The more expensive ones just have higher resolution, more fps, and other features, like facial tracking blah blah blah. We use the Creative entry level one's at work for video conferencing with individuals, and we have some overpriced one in the conf room. :p

For OS, just install noscript, adblockplus, read-only hosts file, zonealarm, avast, adaware/spybot, and maybe an anti-rootkit, and you should be all set with XP. I did this for my grandparents, and it works fine.
 
Yeah, that motherboard did have the nVidia Soundstorm thing, and it was rated about as good as the Audigy 1.

Thanks for the tip on the extensions though; I've already trained them to believe that the blue icon doesn't do anything and the orange icon goes to the internet. Those extensions should help out.
I'm not sure on the read-only hosts file though - if/when Spybot updates it for immunization, would it be able to unlock/relock it?

Still not entirely sure on the Webcam either, I could go for the absolute cheapest I can find, but I'm not sure how useful the other features are. Something like face tracking sounds like it could be useful..

I also forgot to mention one important thing: I also need a wireless card, lol.
I don't feel like running a massive ethernet cable through several rooms, so I'd rather just stick a wireless card in the PC - any specifics here? My router is currently a Dlink DGL-4300, which I believe is ABG, no N, although I may upgrade to N in the future.
 
gimmick for home users, but we have a cam w/ that feature in the conf room because people move around when giving presentations. :p but i agree, completely useless for home usage if you just sit in front of the comp (which is why we have entry level cams at our desks).
 
I know nothing about webcams, however about the ram you should know better. Hit up the FS/FT forum here. If you can't find any old DDR333 try arstechnica.com or anandtech.com

I recently just purchased a bunch of old pc2700 from both those places.

Good luck x_X
 
I see, I figured it might help if maybe they moved around the chair, or got up or something. How are the drivers/included software with these things? I seem to recall reading that many of them were quite buggy and crash-happy.

Also, that wireless card looks quite interesting, although seems a bit more expensive than I expected and that first newegg review about non-working drivers is a bit worrisome. Is there a particular brand that works better, or are they all pretty much the same?

Stiffy, I do know more RAM is always good, but since DDR1 is so old, most threads I've found are pretty expensive, and close to the retail prices ($60-70 on average for 2GB.) I'll have to make do with 1GB for now, unless I find a really good deal.

gwarren; Yes I do realize I can get better hardware, or even a cheap Dell for that matter, for about the same price. However, this is for the most utterly basic of basic tasks - online chatting, webcamming, surfing, email, and watching the occasional DVD. I don't need a quad-core for this by any stretch, and that Sempron is a single core anyway. I already have most of the parts to build something that satisfies their uses, so I'd think it's less wasteful to simply dust it off and re-use it rather than go out and buy new hardware.

All I really need is a webcam, wireless card and an OS to get it back up and running.
 
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