Recycling Old
Computers...Improving Performance.
By Chad Hauris,
Retro
Electronics and Audio Lab, Midland, TX. Updated 11/5/05, 12/3/05
Old Computers, page
1.
Old Computer
Rejuvenation, page 2.
Page 4, Audio
Playback and Serial Terminal installation...with pictures!
Retro Electronics Home Page
In November 2005 I decided to try
and improve the performance I was getting from my computer systems at
home. I had loaded Linux on to 2 old computers this summer, but I was
not getting all that good of results from them. I could not load
graphical web clients such as Mozilla or Netscape. The Dillo client
would work, but its functionality was limited, and sometimes it would
crash. Gregory had to go back to school in August and had to take his
Windows XP computer with him, so I didn't really have a good working
computer at home.
John got a second hand computer from a friend that was a 1999 Pentium
III model with flat panel. He kept the flat panel screen and gave me
the computer. This unit, using Windows 98, was a proven "worker" so I
could access the World Wide Web and work on the website. It also allows
me to record on CD the Goldrush program, which airs on 91.3 FM, KOCV,
Sunday mornings at 6:00. I don't work for them anymore but still
produce Goldrush independently and send it in.
I was having very weak performance from the wireless Ethernet system I
was using. I could barely upload at all. I found that I needed to
re-orient the antenna to the side of the house because where I had had
it, there was trees blocking the line of sight to the tower. Relocating
and increasing the height of the antenna boosted the performance up to
that of a wired broadband connection.
Now, I had a dilemma as I was recording Goldrush. All of the CD players
I got from Texas Recycles Day were having trouble! I couldn't play a CD
to record on to the show. What I wanted to do, was create an audio file
storage and playback computer.
I decided to use the Gateway 2000, 200 Mhz Pentium with 8 GB HD I got
from Texas Recycles Day 2 years ago. The key to improving performance
was to re-install Slackware Linux and partition the HD with a 500 meg
swap partition before I even installed any files. I had failed to
create the swap partition before when I first was expirimenting with
Linux.
As before, I had to connect the HD to an IBM Pentium unit as I could
not boot up off the CD-ROM on the Gateway. I removed both covers and
laid the computers side by side, and just disconnected the data and
power cables from the IBM HD and connected them to the HD in the
Gateway.
With Slackware reinstalled, I now had three tasks to accomplish to make
the audio file system work:
1. I needed to get the Sound Blaster card to work.
2. I needed to get audio off of CD's and onto the HD.
3. I needed audio playback software.
I had bought a Sound Blaster card at Wal-Mart and installed it into one
of the PCI slots. Using the AMP command, I attempted to play the
Drive-In Intermission music from the Retro website. No luck.
I puzzled over this problem and researched Google and it mentioned
using "alsaconf". Running this command got the Sound Blaster working!
To get audio off the CD's I used the
cdparanoia program included
on the slackware distro. This turns CD tracks into wav files.
Now it was time to find audio playback software. I downloaded "CMUS"
from this website:
http://onion.dynserv.net/~timo/index.php?page=Projects/cmus
and did the tar -xjf, ./configure, and make install procedures to
install it.
It's now working great and playing audio continuously through the sound
system. It can also be operated to play certain files on command for
Goldrush production. Not bad for equipment that was headed for the junk
heap!
Here are some photos and recent developments with the computers.
Computer Recycling,
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