What to do with old computer?

fold with it...

Donate it to a school.

drop it off at a homeless shelter

I doubt the little folding power it has will justify the electricity costs.

And yes, school computers are crappy, but not this crappy. I think the new laptops even have i5's in them :O

Little Linux server ?

Anything will be nice for a linux system. And in linux there is allways something to do...
Kernel compiling - shell scripting - apache playground.
It is always nice to have a backup PC. If something goes wrong with your rig (which i hope it does not happen) the you can go with the backup PC to OCN and ask!
Or you could try to join a botnet with this PC. I konw it`s hard to join a botnet nowadays. They don`t accept everyone now.
__JK__

Server

Server comes to mind. I made my old comp a linux firewall/file server and couldn't be happier.

donate it.

I've given away 3-4 machines like that on Craigslist in the last 6 months, even better ones actually.

recycle it ! save the mother earth ! crt monitor can be recycled

Upgrade to XP and Magicjack?

1. Wipe Win98
2. Install favorite Linux flavor
3. Turn into dedicated firewall/FTP server
4. ????
5. Profit

Well, to make it a server, you'd have to buy a Hard Disk, and if you don't want to spend money on a Sata controller card, you'd have to buy an ATA HDD, which will not work with some newer motherboards that no longer have an ATA interface, so in the future it would only work in a small selection of PC's.

But even if you are OK with that, a P3 450 probably only has an ATA 66 interface (I used to work with one, 440BX chipset), and that will limit the performance of the PC as a server.

The second thing is, you probably need more ram than just 96MB. You could try to max it out.

In all honesty though, I only think of one thing to do with it: a legacy gaming machine, provided it has a decent graphics card for it's time.

Or, you could try to sell the components to some legacy PC parts collector.

I would just turn the thing into a router......find a nice small case for the components (or leave in the old case), install a linux distro, and then you don't have to pay upwards of 100 bucks for a decent router with tons of functionality. You may or may not need to buy a network switch for this though.

Take your favorite weapon and go bananas.

Ehh... I don't think it has a decent graphics card. Couldn't run Maplestory or Lego Racer, if I recall (oh, childhood and its crappy games).

I don't think it can upgrade to XP, and even so, it wouldn't do much - I have a Dell from 2006 that runs XP w/ a Pentium 4, albeit very slowly.

I don't know how to work Linux or servers, and therefore see no use for them. D:

Thanks for all these suggestions, though! Might end up craigslisting them as Sheyster said... beats driving to far away trash dumps.

Do you live near a best buy? They recycle old computers for free. Sometimes they charge $10 but they give you a $10 gift certificate in exchange so it turns out to be free if you buy something while you are there.