> If you are putting them in the garage, then I guess that you don't
> need them for use. Why not sell or otherwise dispose of them.
Normally yes but I like real machines to trial new OS on, lately I
have tried Linux Mint and gOS. I also trialled Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu
to see the effect these lightweight systems have on older hardware.
VMs are convenient but sometimes I like to use real, live machines :)
http://linuxmint.com/
http://thinkgos.com
http://fluxbuntu.org/
I also have several SmoothWall Express and commercial systems that I
bring-in and out of storage occaisonally.
http://smoothwall.org
>
> >
> > We also have a few components like network cards, hard discs and CDROM
> > drives which we're keeping in a couple large sealed plastic tubs in
> > which we've placed some silica gel packs.
>
> I don't think the silica gel will make much difference unless you
> have a perfect seal on the case. A better solution would be to keep
> the temperature slightly above ambient, so that way you will
> eliminate any chance of condensation. If you have any appliance
> such as a freezer, running in your garage, then make use of the
> waste heat.
Theres no power to the garage sadly. My lighting solution is a couple
of battery lanterns strung by clothes linewire over the rafters and
counterbalanced by a small brick. :)
I'm looking for a economical but effective solution.
> > Also when taking them out and into use the sensible advice would be to
> > let them reach room temperature and settle for a while (few
> > hours/overnight?) before turning on?
>
> The best thing would be to warm them up in the garage before moving
> them. This is not a problem in the summer. I did have to move a
> monitor to my shed and back a few times, and I just turned it on.
> The picture would be a bit screwy but once it warmed up/dried out,
> it was fine :-) I don't recommend this if the equipment is valuable.
Someone warned me to be careful with harddiscs, turning back on
without proper "drying out" of the whole machine will cause the heads
to score the disc.
> You could always loan the equipment to somebody who could make use
> of it. Does any of it include a quad core processor with a few Gig
> of RAM by any chance? :-)
:-D The most state of the art would be a Pentium III 800Mhz.
Thanks for your replies so far.
