[Scrounger]

Interesting site/challenge; however, I had trouble browsing and finding "what to do" in a reasonable time.

I recently spent like $170 giving a new lease on life to a 15-year-old Lenovo S10-3 Ideapad with a 1-core Intel Atom CPU, 2GB of RAM, a WiFi card, and a 250GB SSD running AntiX Linux in TTY/Command Line mode.

So far, I've turned it into a picture/frame + vision board running Tailscale so I could SSH in and/or rsync stuff.

I am also attempting to run a no-AI version of Pwnagotchi to pwn WiFi networks.

I am also using it as an always-on appliance that does stuff like rsync/backup my entire server, run lightweight Python scripts to check the uptime and days until domain expiration, etc., on a set of websites I own and would like to own, etc.

I have all of this stuff connected to a Telegram bot that reports to me.

It's an interesting set of constraints, and you can surprisingly do a lot of cool stuff.

[jvanderbot]

I gave my wife a 2012 macbook pro running ubuntu. It was a huge upgrade over her ~2014 macbook air running stock, which couldn't even update itself anymore.

It never occured to me to consider it might qualify as a "challenge" since it is 14 years old. It just works fantanstically and was my daily driver until 3-4 years ago.

I got it off ebay for approximately $100, cleaned it, and put in a new battery.

[mghackerlady]

The 2012 macbook pro (non retina, at least. I never owned a retina one) is the last truly great macbook apple ever made. God I loved that thing, I used it to death and was truly saddened by its loss. It lasted a good 12 years

[josephg]

I had an 11” 2011 air. An incredible machine, one of the best I’ve ever owned. I stupidly replaced it with the 2016 retina touchbar MacBook Pro - which is hands down the worst Mac I’ve ever owned bar none. My modern M1 is fine. But that little air was somehow more fun.

[uncircle]

Here’s an idea that’s been following me for a while, if you like low-level stuff:

Make a toy OS that boots into a Lisp shell.

Another to appreciate how fast computers that we call old effectively are: write a game for the shell. Depending on your level of skill, you can try pong, snake, lunar lander, or a 3D software renderer.

[ValdikSS]

OLPC (one laptop per child) had Open Firmware, a Forth bootloader/firmware

https://lwn.net/Articles/209301/

[mghackerlady]

Open Firmware was originally a Sun thing, then Apple adopted it at some point as well

[fragmede]

Make something that makes music.

[ErroneousBosh]

> 15-year-old Lenovo S10-3 Ideapad with a 1-core Intel Atom CPU, 2GB of RAM, a WiFi card, and a 250GB SSD

What a weird coincidence, I've just found one of these while clearing out a box of equipment I'm getting rid of and thought "I should stick NetBSD on this!"

[KurSix]

Trying to use a 15-year-old Atom netbook as a modern laptop is mostly pain. But treating it as a small always-on appliance is a much better fit