Siliconchef by Brian Richardson
It is with a heavy heart that I announce the retirement of my dear old PentiumPro 150MHz server.
Despite the availability of cable routers, ready-made home servers and various inexpensive pieces of technology, my home internet connection has been maintained for the past 5 years using spare parts & some Linux code.
One PPro motherboard, two hard drives, two network cards … built out of scraps when hardware routers were $200 and I needed a stand-alone server.
Time passes, upgrades happen. The SlimServer for my Squeezebox needed more horsepower, so the MP3s are now on my wife’s Athlon machine. CompUSA has a wireless router for $10 after rebate, so I grabbed one of those with some X-mas Money.
Now the PPro is in retirement. It’s odd, since I’ve moved away from more of the do-it yourself attitude. Staying up an extra hour to hot-rod the gaming PC has been pushed aside to spend more time on other things while my simpler & stabler PCs perform more dutiful tasks (music serving, video editing, basic web & e-mail access).
Yes, I still have my geeky habits … video production, getting that Harmony remote to do 400 things with the press of a single button, debating the merits of WEP or WPA on the new wireless network … but eventually the DIY recycled server has to go to pasture someday.
Of course, I might repurpose it as a machine for TechCorps or some Linux tests … after all, I’m still a bit of a nerd 
