Digital Trends

Create a retro arcade

Another popular project that can utilize your old computer is MAME – the Multiple Machine Arcade Emulator. MAME is a project that emulates old arcade games for use on PC hardware. There are arcade emulators for most operating systems too.

If you look hard enough, you'll find that there are over 3000 real arcade games emulated for MAME. Even an old 486 processor can play some MAME games. The MAME Website states that a Pentium III or Celeron 700MHz can play at least half of the emulated games.

Beware though, MAME can be a very time-consuming and obsessive project. I built my own MAME cabinet last summer and it took quite a few weekends – but was well worth the effort. A MAME cabinet is an old arcade cabinet gutted and fitted with PC hardware. You can get products called "keyboard encoders" such as the I-Pac that you can use to hook a regular computer up to real arcade controls, such as the arcade parts sold by Happ Controls. A great place to start, besides the MAME site, is ArcadeControls.com. Take a look at their project pages for inspiration. There are some incredible arcade projects out there and a lot of dedicated people willing to help.

Make a game server

If you play online games, or want to, finding a good server that you and your friends can enjoy is sometimes tough. An old PC and your broadband connection can be used to host a small online game. Many games such as the Medal of Honor series and Call of Duty can be run on systems as slow as a Pentium III 700MHz. Your broadband upload speed is the bottleneck in such a server, and while such as setup wouldn't support too many players, if you have a small group of local friends, it would certainly be good enough for serving games.

Not only will running a game server allow you to control what games and maps you play, it can be a lot of fun and great experience. If you have a router, you can invite friends over to play in a LAN party, or you can host over the Internet.

Contribute to a distributed computing project

Distributed computing is the use of "idle CPU cycles" from the computers of volunteers all over the world, working to solve a common problem. There are many distributed computing projects around the world working towards many different goals.

One of the most popular is "Folding@Home" which uses idle CPU cycles from all over the world to help study protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. The reason for this as explained by the "Folding@Home" Website is  that the "process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease."

Another popular project is "SETI@Home" which uses distributed computing to analyze radio telescope data to help in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI@Home has had over 4.8 million users. The donated CPU cycles have so far equated to over 1.78 million years of CPU time.

To find out about other DC projects, check out the sites Grid.org and Distributed.net or look at all of the projects on the aspenleaf.com list.