Nearly everyone has an old laptop, desktop or router collecting dust in the basement or garage. Here are 17 ways to put that old tech to new use.
Do you have an old computer or router—or a whole heap of them—lying around collecting dust? If you have some spare time you can put them to good use and learn a few things along the way.
In this article, we’ll discover 17 different tech projects making use of old computers and wireless routers. Some projects you may be interested in just for experimental reasons, but most can serve a real and productive purpose.
The majority of the computer projects require a working machine, but most will work with relativity low resources and some without a working Windows (or any OS) installation. Some projects will work with virtually any old PC or laptop from the past decade, while some may require a machine that’s only a couple years old. Since many consumers tend to work on a three, four or five year cycle (meaning they buy a new machine every 3-5 years) most of the machines you have sitting in the garage should work just fine.
Before wiping your computer’s hard drive, you might want to make sure there’s nothing on it that you want to save. Who knows, you might find some old documents or photos that you can reminisce over! The third project on the next page actually discusses how to recover your files.
Most of the wireless router projects require the use of a firmware replacement. These only work for select brands, models, and model versions. Your other limitation is the wireless standard; if your old router supports only 802.11b, wireless connections are limited to speeds of 11 Mbps. If using 802.11b/g you’re limited to speeds of 54 Mbps. To put those older standards into prospective, the newer 802.11n standard supports speeds to 450 Mbps and above.
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Do you have an old computer or router—or a whole heap of them—lying around collecting dust? If you have some spare time you can put them to good use and learn a few things along the way.
In this article, we’ll discover 17 different tech projects making use of old computers and wireless routers. Some projects you may be interested in just for experimental reasons, but most can serve a real and productive purpose.
The majority of the computer projects require a working machine, but most will work with relativity low resources and some without a working Windows (or any OS) installation. Some projects will work with virtually any old PC or laptop from the past decade, while some may require a machine that’s only a couple years old. Since many consumers tend to work on a three, four or five year cycle (meaning they buy a new machine every 3-5 years) most of the machines you have sitting in the garage should work just fine.
Before wiping your computer’s hard drive, you might want to make sure there’s nothing on it that you want to save. Who knows, you might find some old documents or photos that you can reminisce over! The third project on the next page actually discusses how to recover your files.
Most of the wireless router projects require the use of a firmware replacement. These only work for select brands, models, and model versions. Your other limitation is the wireless standard; if your old router supports only 802.11b, wireless connections are limited to speeds of 11 Mbps. If using 802.11b/g you’re limited to speeds of 54 Mbps. To put those older standards into prospective, the newer 802.11n standard supports speeds to 450 Mbps and above.
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